Part 24 (1/2)
Martin, from his seat by the reading-lamp, began to inform them about the home. He started philosophically, taking as his text the a.s.sertion that voluntary a.s.sociations are always preferable to compulsory grouping and that it should be our object to restrict such compulsion as far as possible. The home is a compulsory a.s.sociation and its sphere must be limited. He pointed out that since the whole trend of industrialism had been to invade the home, to capture the women and to drag them out to wage-slavery, it was irrational to stop in the present position. The home must be either a real thing where women were free from the direct clutches of capitalism and made up for indirect economic dependence by freedom from drudgery in offices and factories, or else we must be logical and complete the tendency by industrialising the home. This process would of course destroy the home as at present understood. But it would subst.i.tute for the present compulsory group a voluntary a.s.sociation: and this he would welcome because the home of to-day was not only a compulsory but a fundamentally rotten inst.i.tution. (_Loud applause from emanc.i.p.ated young men._)
He didn't care whether women had votes or not: that was inessential.
The great thing was to smash the home by making it a commercial unit.
This, he maintained, could be done by the State endowment of motherhood and by marriage contracts in which payment for all domestic work should be made by the husband. There must be honest, open payment; wheedling and pin-money must go. Probably the best solution would be to insist on a fixed percentage of the husband's income going to the wife as a matter of course so long as she lived with him and kept his house.
Even more important was the case of the children. They too must be economic members of a commercial unit. Of course in early childhood that was impossible, but as soon as they reached a reasonable age--say seventeen--they too should have a legal claim to a certain percentage of the family income, to be continued until they were self-supporting.
In the interest of youth, no one should be compelled to support himself until the age of twenty-four, for it was wicked to drive people into offices at eighteen, before they had known freedom of any kind. During these seven years the child might either take his salary and go or stay at home as a paying guest. The amount paid for such board would depend on the standard of life of the family. After all the parents had brought the child into the world without asking if he wanted it, and consequently, so far from having rights with regard to the fruit of their pleasure, they had only duties. Aristotle was reduced to pulp with regard to this point.
Such a policy would safeguard the liberties of the child, who, on reaching a reasonable age, could always go away and need not accept his father's politics and religion with his father's beef. The home would thus be a compulsory a.s.sociation only during early childhood and would be a voluntary a.s.sociation for the adolescent. Thus would we solve the woman question and build an honest, self-reliant nation. Let Dr Bosanquet maunder on about organisms and compare the family meal--that ghastly rite--to the Holy Communion. To h.e.l.l with such sentimentality!
(_Applause._)
Martin then reverted to political philosophy and maintained that no group whose members.h.i.+p was not spontaneous could have a vital purpose and a common will. In so far as the family remained compulsory it could have no such will: because a man was born a Jones he need not have the same interests as the rest of the Jones' group: indeed most great men loathed their relations. For the small children a home of some sort, whether private or munic.i.p.al, was inevitable. The question was whether they were going to save the young adult from sentimental tyranny by insisting on incomes and latch-key rights for sons and daughters and building up a mult.i.tude of voluntary co-operative groups on a strictly business basis.
”Of course I admit it is more or less impossible,” he said as he finished. ”But we may as well talk theory.”
There was a short interval, and then Rendell, by grace of his three ”F's,” was chosen to open the discussion.
He couldn't, he said, accept all that about voluntary a.s.sociations. He wasn't a Syndicalist, though, judging from the latest efforts of the Tories, we were all not only Socialists, but Syndicalists nowadays. He believed in the State.... The State ... yes, organisms and all that.
He didn't mind the commercialism, provided it was State commercialism.
Couldn't have these voluntary groups ... dangerous. Besides, he wanted domestic work all done by clever machines, electric stoves and automatic beds that ”made” themselves and became sofas in the next room by slipping through the wall. This would liberate woman. ”Woman's sphere is not the home, her home is the sphere.”
With these feeble aphorisms he sat down. He had at least convinced the company on one point--namely, that discussions are always a futile anti-climax.
But Davenant was up, and he was amusing, though he always said the same thing. ”I protest,” he said, ”against industrialism being carried any further. It has marred our men, let us keep it from our women. I want to see a world full of guilds and craftsmen and artificers, not working eight hours a day and then going to a munic.i.p.al park to drink munic.i.p.al cocoa and hear the munic.i.p.al band, but working because they love their work, because it is their creation, their life. And I want to see women working as they love to work, not sordidly and cheaply in a market of labour. The women I want will not work against men, but with them and for them, fas.h.i.+oning beautiful homes and beautiful things of every kind. And you will find that it is no use to put woman on a level with men because women are not crudely rational like men, who a.n.a.lyse and destroy. With woman lies the future, because she alone can create without destroying. Man is destructive and a.n.a.lytic. Woman is ultimate, intuitive, basic, and synthetic.”
The less experienced members of the Essay Society began to wonder whether this could mean anything and roused themselves from sleep. But those who knew Davenant understood. He had an affection for certain words and loved to entwine them with any subject that came to hand.
Woman was not the only ent.i.ty which Davenant had been known to call ”ultimate, intuitive, basic, and synthetic.”
Then a remote, unknown young man in spectacles and spats said in a plaintive way that the reader of the paper did not understand about Laav: that Laav made all things different: that religion was morality tinged with emotion: that the home was just what its inhabitants made of it: that a change of heart was needed: that you couldn't make men good by Act of Parliament; that, just as dancing was the poetry of motion, so Laav was the poetry of life.
Then this master of the catch-word sat down amid a deathly silence. It appeared afterwards that he had got in by mistake: he thought he was attending a meeting of Oxford Churchmen on Home Missions. Lawrence rose. He began, suitably, by treading on some coffee-cups and bananas, stumbling backward and tripping over the cord which united the reading-lamp and the wall. The lamp fell with a crash and confusion and foul language ensued. At length order was restored and he could let himself go.
”It may seem odd,” he said, ”but I agree with the last speaker more than with anyone else: and he was about as wrong as can be. He was right when he said love mattered but wrong in what he meant by it. The love that counts isn't the squidgy, religious thing he wants and it hasn't anything to do with the great pa.s.sions of poets and intellectual young men. It isn't even Browning's ethereal penguin, half angel and half bird. The love that really matters for people who are interested in the way the world is going is just extensive, sentimental wallowing.
Nothing more. Has it ever struck you remote philosophers that making love is the only thing that most people really care about? The papers may rave about a great political crisis or a strike movement. But if you met the average man you wouldn't bet a b.u.t.ton that he cared twopence either way, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that he cared about taking a girl out on Sat.u.r.day night. That's the permanent and irresistible fact. Every cinema film, every piece of cheap fiction, every popular song has one message. There must be 'a strong love interest.' The world has known friends.h.i.+p and sensuality and pa.s.sion since the beginning. This great flood of sentimentality is as new as it is strong.”
He paused a moment to look round. The sleepers had been roused: Lawrence was good when he was under way.
”It came in with the industrial system,” he went on. ”I believe that there is in man a natural tendency to look for beauty somewhere.
Capitalism made of work so foul a thing that it couldn't be found there. And in answer to demand it turned out a numberless horde of stunted, overworked, half-educated people. Work was foul: for ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts there was no time, except on Sunday, and then it was wicked.
Some means of self-expression had to be found, something to bring comfort of a sort, something that would be suitable for Sundays and the evenings. There was s.e.x. I wonder why it never occurs to the parsons who protest against Sunday games (for the poor) that the British Sabbath is nothing but a forcing-house for s.e.x. The average artisan or shop-girl has not the possibility of any other occupation.
”The worker has combined with his notion of love the notion of home as a place where he will be free to do as he likes, to express himself, to create the ugliness which he or she thinks 'so sweet.' The capitalist has bound his hands and his brain and, if the Eugenists get their abominable way, he'll bind his emotions and his body too. Hitherto he has been free to love as he chooses, and that's why he loves such a lot. It isn't for nothing that a very popular song tells of a Little Grey Home in the West where people go to amatory bliss 'when the toil of the long day is o'er.'
”Well, what's the upshot of it all? Merely that the home matters far more than you imagine, because it's the one place where the Servile State hasn't really got hold of its victims yet. It's true that a middle-cla.s.s home may be deadly; so far I agree with the paper. But I don't agree that the minor's next step is to smash the home altogether.
No, we've got to save it if we want to save men from being turned into mere wealth-producing machines. We've got to save it with all its dangers because it is the expression of genuine and valuable emotion.
You people are all for smas.h.i.+ng the home before you've smashed the system: my idea is just the reverse. When you have a state in which men can take pride and find beauty in their work, you can go in and smash the home. If you try and put the home on a business basis you may help a few middle-cla.s.s people who have brains and time enough to quarrel, but you'll be taking from the oppressed their only release and making life more commercial and sordid than it is at present. Set up a society where life has rational interests, where a man can express his desire for beauty without leaving it to nocturnal sentimentality, and I'm with you. In the meanwhile there's a good deal to be said for The Little Grey Home in the West. It answers a need. To kill that need you must smash Industrialism. And that, my Fabian friends, is some business.”