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Without Prejudice

I >> Israel Zangwill >> Without Prejudice



William Fishburne, Charles Aldarondo, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.


WITHOUT PREJUDICE

BY I. ZANGWILL

Author Of "The Master," "Children Of The Ghetto" Etc., Etc.

* * * * *

TO YOU

* * * * *

_NOTE_

_This book is a selection, slightly revised, from my miscellaneous work
during the last four or five years, and the title is that under which the
bulk of it has appeared, month by month, in the "Pall Mall Magazine." In
selecting, I have omitted those pieces which hang upon other people's
books, plays, or pictures--a process of exclusion which, while giving
unity to a possible collection of my critical writings in another volume,
leaves the first selection exclusively egoistic._

_I.Z._

* * * * *

CONTENTS


I

GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES


I. A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN: WHICH MAY SERVE TO INTRODUCE THE
INTRODUCTION
II. TUNING UP
III. ART IN ENGLAND
IV. BOHEMIA AND VERLAINE
V. THE INDESTRUCTIBLES
VI. CONCERNING GENERAL ELECTIONS
VII. THE REALISTIC NOVEL
VIII. IN DEFENCE OF GAMBLING
IX. TRULY RURAL
X. OPINIONS OF THE YOUNG FOGEY
XI. CRITICS AND PEOPLE
XII. TABLE-TALK
XIII. THE ABOLITION OF MONEY
XIV. MODERN MYTH-MAKING
XV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF TOPSY-TURVYDOM
XVI. GHOST-STORIES
XVII. A THEORY OF TABLE-TURNING
XVIII. SOCIETIES TO FOUND
XIX. INDECENCY ON THE ENGLISH STAGE
XX. LOVE IN LIFE AND LITERATURE
XXI. DEATH AND MARRIAGE
XXII. THE CHOICE OF PARENTS
XXIII. PATER AND PROSE
XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF NAMES
XXV. AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
XXVI. THE PENALTIES OF FAME
XXVII. ON FINISHING A BOOK



II

HERE, THERE, AND SOMEWHERE ELSE: Philosophic Excursions


I. ABERDEEN
II. ANTWERP
III. BROADSTAIRS AND RAMSGATE
IV. BUDAPEST
V. CHICAGO
VI. EDINBURGH
VII. FIESOLE AND FLORENCE
VIII. GLASGOW
IX. HASLEMERE
X. PARIS
XL SLAPTON SANDS
XII. VENICE
XIII. VENTNOR
XIV. SOMEWHERE ELSE



III

AFTERTHOUGHTS: A Bundle of Brevities


MOONSHINE
CAPITAL
CREDIT
THE SMALL BOY
A DAY IN TOWN
THE PROFESSION OF CHARITY
THE PRIVILEGES OF POVERTY
SALVATION FOR THE SERAPHIM
TRUTH--LOCAL AND TEMPORAL
THE CREED OF DESPAIR
SOCIAL BUGBEARS
MARTYRS
THE LONDON SEASON
THE ACADEMY
PORTRAITS OF GENTLEMEN
PHOTOGRAPHY AND REALISM
THE GREAT UNHUNG
THE ABOLITION OF CATALOGUES
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
LAY CONFESSORS
Q. E. D. NOVELS
THE MOUSE WHO DIED
THEOLOGIC NOVELS
MUDIE MEASURE
THE PROP OF LETTERS
THE LATTER-DAY POET
AN ATTACK OF ALLITERATION
THE HUMOROUS
THE DISCOUNT FARCE
THE FRANCHISE FARCE
THE MODERN WAR FARCE
FIREWORKS
TIME'S FORELOCK
DIARIES
"LOOKING BACKWARD"
LONG LIVES
VIVE LA MORT!
MEN AND BOOKMEN
JAMES I. ON TOBACCO
A COUNTERBLAST TO JAMES I.
VALEDICTORY

* * * * *

PART I

GOSSIPS AND FANTASIES




I

A VISION OF THE BURDEN OF MAN

And it came to pass that my soul was vexed with the problems of life, so
that I could not sleep. So I opened a book by a lady novelist, and fell
to reading therein. And of a sudden I looked up, and lo! a great host of
women filled the chamber, which had become as the Albert Hall for
magnitude--women of all complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes.
Some were bewitching and beautiful, some wan and flat-breasted, some
elegant and stately, some ugly and squat, some plain and whitewashed, and
some painted and decorated; women in silk gowns, and women in divided
skirts, and women in widows' weeds, and women in knickerbockers, and
women in ulsters, and women in furs, and women in crinolines, and women
in tights, and women in rags; but every woman of them all in tears. The
great chamber was full of a mighty babel; shouts and ululations, groans
and moans, weeping and wailing and gnashing of false and genuine teeth,
and tearing of hair both artificial and natural; and therewith the
flutter of a myriad fans, and the rustle of a million powder-puffs. And
the air reeked with a thousand indescribable scents--patchouli and attar
of roses and cherry blossom, and the heavy odours of hair-oil and dyes
and cosmetics and patent medicines innumerable.

Now when the women perceived me on my reading-chair in their midst, the
shrill babel swelled to a savage thunder of menace, so that I deemed they
were wroth with me for intruding upon them in mine own house; but as mine
ear grew accustomed to the babel of tongues, I became aware of the true
import of their ejaculations.

"O son of man!" they cried, in various voices: "thy cruel reign is over,
thy long tyranny is done; thou hast glutted thyself with victims, thou
hast got drunken on our hearts' blood, we have made sport for thee in our
blindness. But the Light is come at last, the slow night has budded into
the rose of dawn, the masculine monster is in his death-throes, the
kingdom of justice is at hand, the Doll's House has been condemned by the
sanitary inspector."

I strove to deprecate their wrath, but my voice was as the twitter of a
sparrow in a hurricane. At length I ruffled my long hair to a leonine
mane, and seated myself at the piano. And lo! straightway there fell a
deep silence--you could have heard a hairpin drop.

"What would you have me do, O daughters of Eve?" I cried. "What is my
sin? what my iniquity?" Then the clamour recommenced with tenfold
violence, disappointment at the loss of a free performance augmenting
their anger.

"Give me a husband," shrieked one.

"Give me a profession," shrieked another.

"Give me a divorce," shrieked a third.

"Give me free union," shrieked a fourth.

"Give me an income," shrieked a fifth.

"Give me my deceased sister's husband," shrieked a sixth.

"Give me my divorced husband's children," shrieked a seventh.

"Give me the right to paint from the nude in the Academy schools,"
shrieked an eighth.

"Give me an Oxford degree," shrieked a ninth.

"Give me a cigar," shrieked a tenth.

"Give me a vote," shrieked an eleventh.

"Give me a pair of trousers," shrieked a twelfth.

"Give me a seat in the House," shrieked a thirteenth.

"Daughters of the horse-leech," I made answer, taking advantage of a
momentary lull, "I am not in a position to give away any of these things.
You had better ask at the Stores." But the tempest out-thundered me.

"I want to ride bareback in the Row in tights and spangles at 1 p. m. on
Sundays," shrieked a soberly clad suburban lady, who sported a
wedding-ring. "I want to move the world with my pen or the point of my
toe; I want to write, dance, sing, act, paint, sculpt, fence, row, ride,
swim, hunt, shoot, fish, love all men from young rustic farmers to old
town _roués_, lead the Commons, keep a salon, a restaurant, and a
zoological garden, row a boat in boy's costume, with a tenor by moonlight
alone, and deluge Europe and Asia with blood shed for my intoxicating
beauty. I am primeval, savage, unlicensed, unchartered, unfathomable,
unpetticoated, tumultuous, inexpressible, irrepressible, overpowering,
crude, mordant, pugnacious, polyandrous, sensual, fiery, chaste, modest,
married, and misunderstood."

"But, madam," I remarked--for in her excitement she approached within
earshot of me--"I understand thee quite well, and I really am not
responsible for thy emotions." Her literary style beguiled me into the
responsive archaicism of the second person singular.

"Coward!" she snapped. "Coward and satyr! For centuries thou hast
trampled upon my sisters, and desecrated womanhood."

"I beg thy pardon," I rejoined mildly.

"Thou dost not deserve it," she interrupted.

"Thou art substituting hysteria for history," I went on. "I was not born
yesterday, but I have only scored a few years more than a quarter of one
century, and seeing that my own mother was a woman, I must refuse to be
held accountable for the position of the sex."

"Sophist!" she shrieked. "It is thy apathy and selfishness that
perpetuate the evil."

Then I bethought me of my long vigils of work and thought, the slow,
bitter years in which I "ate my bread with tears, and sat weeping on my
bed," and I remembered that some of those tears were for the sorrows of
that very sex which was now accusing me of organised injustice. But I
replied gently: "I am no tyrant; I am a simple, peaceful citizen, and it
is as much as I can do to earn my bread and the bread of some of thy sex.
Life is hard enough for both sexes, without setting one against the
other. We are both the outcome of the same great forces, and both of us
have our special selfishnesses, advantages, and drawbacks. If there is
any cruelty, it is Nature's handiwork, not man's. So far from trampling
on womanhood, we have let a woman reign over us for more than half a
century. We worship womanhood, we have celebrated woman in song, picture,
and poem, and half civilisation has adored the Madonna. Let us have
woman's point of view and the truth about her psychology, by all means.
But beware lest she provoke us too far. The _Ewigweibliche_ has become
too literal a fact, and in our reaction against this everlasting woman
question we shall develop in unexpected directions. Her cry for equal
purity will but end in the formal institution of the polygamy of the
Orient--"

As I spoke the figure before me appeared to be undergoing a
transformation, and, ere I had finished, I perceived I was talking to an
angry, seedy man in a red muffler.

"Thee keeps down the proletariat," he interrupted venomously. "Thee lives
on the sweat of his brow, while thee fattens at ease. Thee plants thy
foot on his neck."

"Do I?" I exclaimed, lifting up my foot involuntarily.

Mistaking the motion, he disappeared, and in his stead I saw a withered
old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. "I went to the mouth of
hell for thee," he said, with large reproachful eyes; "and thou leavest
me to rot in the workhouse."

"I am awfully sorry!" I said. "I never heard of thee. It is the nation--"

"The nation!" he cried scornfully. "_Thou_ art the nation; the nation is
only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the
man."

"Thou art the man," echoed a thousand voices: "Society is only an
abstraction." And, looking round, I saw, to my horror, that the women had
quite disappeared, and their places were filled by men of all
complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes.

"I died in the streets," shouted an old cripple in the background--"round
the corner from thy house, in thy wealthy parish--I died of starvation in
this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and a generation after
Dickens's 'Christmas Carol.'"

"If I had only known!" I murmured, while my eyes grew moist. "Why didst
thou not come to me?"

"I was too proud to beg," he answered. "The really poor never beg."

"Then how am I responsible?" I retorted.

"How art thou responsible?" cried the voices indignantly; and one
dominating the rest added: "I want work and can't get it. Dost thou call
thyself civilised?"

"Civilised?" echoed a weedy young man scornfully. "I am a genius, yet I
have had nothing to eat all day. Thy congeners killed Keats and
Chatterton, and when I am dead thou wilt be sorry for what thou hast not
done."

"But hast thou published anything?" I asked.

"How could I publish?" he replied, indignantly.

"Then how could I be aware of thee?" I inquired.

"But my great-grandfather _did_ publish," said another. "Thou goest into
ecstacies over him, and his books have sold by tens of thousands; but me
thou leavest pensionless, to earn my living as a cooper. Bah!"

"And thou didst put _my_ father in prison," said another, "for publishing
the works of a Continental novelist; but when the novelist himself comes
here, thou puttest him in the place of honour."

I was fast growing overwhelmed with shame.

"Where is thy patriotism! Thou art letting some of the most unique
British birds become extinct!" "Yes, and thou lettest Christmas cards be
made in Germany, and thou deridest Whistler, and refusest to read Dod
Grile, and thou lettest books be published with the sheets pinned instead
of sewn. And the way thou neglectest Coleridge's grave----"

"Coleridge's grave?" interrupted a sad-eyed enthusiast. "Why, thou hast
put no stone at all to mark where James Thomson lies!"

"Thou Hun, thou Vandal!" shrieked a fresh contingent of voices in
defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the Emanuel
Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of
King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from
Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name
on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be
inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with advertisements of pills,
and the blue heaven itself with sky-signs; and in thy passion for cheap
and nasty pictorial journalism thou art allowing the art of
wood-engraving to die out, even as thou acceptest photogravures instead
of etchings."

I cowered before their wrath, while renewed cries of "Thou art
responsible! Thou! Thou!" resounded from all sides.

"A pretty Christian _thou_ art!" exclaimed another voice in unthinking
vituperation. "Thou decimatest savage tribes with rum and Maxim guns,
thou makest money by corrupting the East with opium. Thou allowest the
Armenians to be done to death, and thou wilt not put a stop to
child-marriages in India."

"But for thee I should have been alive to-day," broke in a venerable
spirit hovering near the ceiling. "If thou hadst refused to sell poison
except in specially shaped bottles----"

"What canst thou expect of a man who allows anybody to carry firearms?"
interrupted another voice.

"Or who fills his newspaper with divorce cases?"

"Is it any wonder the rising generation is cynical, and the young maiden
of fifteen has ceased to be bashful?"

"Shame on thee!" hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly
that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a
Blue Book blocked my way.

"Where didst thou get that hat?" he cried. "Doubtless from some sweating
establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were
made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou
engage an accountant to examine his books?"

"I--I am so busy," I stammered feebly.

"Shuffler! How knowest thou thou art not spreading to the world the germs
of scarlet fever and typhoid picked up in the sweaters' dens?"

"What cares _he_?" cried a tall, thin man, with a slight stoop and gold
spectacles. "Does he not poison the air every day with the smoke of his
coal fires?"

"Pison the air!" repeated a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. "He pisoned
my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke
'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E
destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv
my darters on the streets."

"This is what comes of undisciplined compassion," observed the
gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. "The integrity and virtue of
a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic
emotions!"

"Stand out of the way!" I cried to the burly man; "I wish to leave my own
house."

"And carry thy rudeness abroad?" he retorted indignantly. "Perchance thou
wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in
thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency."

I tried to move him out of the way by brute force, and we wrestled, and
he threw me. I heard myself strike the floor with a thud.

Rubbing my eyes, instead of my back, I discovered that I was safe in my
reading-chair, and that it was the lady novelist's novel that had made
the noise. I picked it up, but I still seemed to see the reproachful eyes
of a thousand tormentors, and hear their objurgations. Yet I had none of
the emotions of Scrooge, no prickings of conscience, no ferment of good
resolutions. Instead, I felt a wave of bitterness and indignation
flooding my soul.

"I will _not_ be responsible for the universe!" I cried to the ceiling.
"I am sick of the woman question, and the problem of man makes my gorge
rise. Is there one question in the world that can really be settled? No,
not one, except by superficial thinkers. Just as the comprehensive
explanation of 'the flower in the crannied wall' is the explanation of
the whole universe, so every question is but a thin layer of ice over
infinite depths. You may touch it lightly, you may skate over it; but
press it at all, and you sink into bottomless abysses. The simplest
interrogation is a doorway to chaos, to endless perspectives of winding
paths perpetually turning upon themselves in a blind maze. Suppose one is
besought to sign a petition against capital punishment. A really
conscientious and logical person, pursuing truth after the manner
recommended by Descartes, and professed by Huxley, could not settle this
question for himself without going into the endless question of Free-will
_versus_ Necessity, and studying the various systems of philosophy and
ethics. Murder may be due to insane impulse: Insanity must therefore be
studied. Moreover, ought not hanging to be abolished in cases of murder
and reserved for more noxious crimes, such as those of fraudulent
directors? This opens up new perspectives and new lines of study. The
whole theory of Punishment would also have to be gone into: should it be
restrictive, or revengeful, or reformative? (See Aristotle, Bentham,
Owen, etc.) Incidentally great tracts of the science of Psychology are
involved. And what right have we to interfere with our fellow-creatures
at all? This opens up the vast domains of Law and Government, and
requires the perusal of Montesquieu, Bodin, Rousseau, Mill, etc., etc.
Sociology would also be called in to determine the beneficent or
maleficent influence of the death-punishment upon the popular mind; and
statistics would be required to trace the operation of the systems of
punishment in various countries. History would be consulted to the same
effect. The sanctity of human life being a religious dogma, the religions
of the world would have to be studied, to see under what conditions it
has been thought permissible to destroy life. One ought not to rely on
translations: Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic,
and the few years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded
by a first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament
enjoins capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the
other way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter
positively? Here comes in the vast army of Bible commentators and
theologians. But perhaps the text is of late origin, interpolated. The
Dutch and German savants rise in their might, with their ingenious
theories and microscopic scholarship. But there are other scientists who
bid us not heed the Bible at all, because it contradicts the latest
editions of their primers. Is, then, science strictly accurate? To answer
this you must have a thorough acquaintance with biology, geology,
astronomy, besides deciding for yourself between the conflicting views at
nearly every point. By the time you have made up your mind as to whether
capital punishment should be abolished, it has passed out of the
statute-book, and you are dead, or mad, or murdered.

"But were this the only question a man has to settle in his short span of
years, he might cheerfully engage in its solution. But life bristles with
a hundred questions equally capital, and with a thousand-and-one minor
problems on which he is expected to have an opinion, and about which he
is asked at one time or other, if only at dinner."

At this moment the Poet who shares my chambers came in--later than he
should have done--and interrupted my soliloquy. But I was still hot, and
enlisted his interest in my vision and my apologia, and began drawing up
a list of the questions, in which after a while he became so interested
that he started adding to it. Hours flew like minutes, and only the
splitting headache we both brought upon ourselves drove us to desist.
Here is our first rough list of the questions that confront the modern
man--a disorderly, deficient, and tautological list, no doubt, to which
any reader can add many hundred more.


VEXED QUESTIONS

Queen Mary and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct
transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of
museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is
there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ
theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity
of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or
steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system.
Impressionism, decadence, Japanese art, the _plein air_ school.
Realism _v._ romance; Gothic _v._ Greek art. Russian fiction, Dutch,
Bulgarian, Norwegian, American, etc., etc.: opinion of every novel
ever written, of every school, in every language (you must read them
in the original); ditto of every opera and piece of music, with
supplementary opinions about every vocalist and performer; ditto of
every play, with supplementary opinions about every actor, dancer,
etc.; ditto of every poem; ditto of every picture ever painted, with
estimates of every artist in every one of his manners at every stage
of his development and decisions as to which pictures are not
genuine; also of every critic of literature, drama, art, and music
(in all of which departments certain names are equal to an appalling
plexus of questions--Wagner, Ibsen, Meredith, Browning, Comte,
Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Degas, Rousseau, Tolstoï, Maeterlinck,
Strindberg, Zola, Whistler, Leopardi, Emerson, Carlyle, Swedenborg,
Rabelais). Socialism, its various schools, its past and its future;
Anarchism: bombs. Labour questions: the Eight Hours' Day, the
Unemployed, the Living Wage, etc., etc. Mr. Gladstone's career. Shall
members of Parliament be paid? Chamberlain's position; ditto for
every statesman in every country, to-day and in all past ages. South
Africa, Rhodes, Captain Jim. The English girl _v._ the French or the
American. Invidious comparisons of every people from every point of
view, physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic. Vizetelly.
Vivisection. First love _v._ later love; French marriage system _v._
the English. The corrupt choruses in the Greek dramas (also in modern
burlesque--with the question of the Church and Stage Guild, Zaeo's
back, the County Council, etc.). How to make London beautiful. Fogs.
Bi-metallism. Secondary Education. Volunteer or conscript? Anonymity
in journalism. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism:
their mutual superiorities, their past and their future. Plato,
Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and all philosophers and philosophies. The
Independent Theatre. The origin of language, Where do the Aryans come
from? Was Mrs. Maybrick guilty? Same question for every great
murderer. The Tichborne case, and every other _cause célèbre_,
including divorce cases. Crime and punishment. Music-hall songs.
Heredity: are acquired qualities inherited? Is tobacco a mistake? Is
drink? Is marriage? Is the high hat? Polygamy; the social evil. Are
the planets inhabited? Is the English concert pitch too high? The
divided skirt. The antiquity of man. Geology: is the story of the
rocks short, or long, or true? Geology _v._ Genesis; Genesis _v._
Kuenen. Was Pope a poet? Was Whitman? Was Poe a drunkard, or Griswold
a liar? Was Hamlet mad? Was Blake? Is waltzing immoral? Is humour
declining? Is there a modern British drama? Corporal punishment in
schools. Compulsory vaccination. What shall we do with our daughters?
or our sons? or our criminals? or our paupers? or ourselves? Female
franchise. Republicanism. Which is the best soap? or tooth-powder? Is
Morris's printing really good? Is the race progressing? Is our navy
fit? Should dynamite be used in war? or in peace? What persons should
be buried in Westminster Abbey? Origin of every fairy-tale. Who made
our proverbs and ballads? Cold baths _v._ hot or Turkish. Home Rule.
Should the Royal Academy be abolished? and who should be the next
R.A.? Should there be an Academy of Literature? or a Channel Tunnel?
Was De Lesseps to blame? Should we not patronise English
watering-places? Should there be pianos in board schools? or
theology? Authors and publishers; artists and authors. Is literature
a trade? Should pauper aliens be admitted? or pauper couples
separated? Bank Holiday. Irving _v._ Tree. The world's politics,
present, future, and even past--retrospective questions being
constantly re-agitated: as, Should the American slaves have been
emancipated? or Was the French Revolution a Folly? _Apropos_, which
is the best history of it? Who is the rightful Queen of England? Is
cycling injurious to the cyclist? or the public? Who was the Man in
the Iron Mask? Is the Stock Exchange immoral? What is influenza?
Ought we to give cabmen more than their fare? Tips generally. Should
dogs be muzzled? Have we a right to extend our empire? or to keep it?
Should we federate it? Are there ghosts? Is spiritualism a fraud? Is
theosophy? Was Madame Blavatsky? Was Jezebel a wretch, or a
Hellenist? The abuse of the quarantine. Should ladies ride astride?
Amateurs _v_. professionals in sports. Is prize-fighting beneficial?
Is trial by jury played out? The cost of law: Chancery. Abuses of the
Universities. The Cambridge Spinning House. Compulsory Greek. The
endowment of research. A teaching university in London. Is there a
sea-serpent? Servants _v._ mistresses. Shall the Jews have Palestine?
Classical _v._ modern side in schools. Should we abolish the
censorship of plays? or fees? or found a dramatic academy? or a State
theatre? Should gambling be legal? Should potatoes be boiled in their
skins? should dynamiters? Should newspapers publish racing tips? or
divorce cases? or comment? The New Journalism. What is the best ninth
move in the Evans gambit? Would Morphy have been a first-class
chess-player to-day? Is the Steinitz gambit sound? Do plants dream?
Ought we to fill up income-tax papers accurately? Shelley and Harriet
and Mary. Swift and Vanessa and Stella. Lord and Lady Byron. Did Mrs.
Carlyle deserve it? The limits of biography; of photography in
painting; of the spot-stroke in billiards. Did Shakespeare hold
horses? Should girls be brought up like boys, or boys like girls, or
both like one another? Are animals automata? Have they reason? or do
they live without reason? Will Brighton A's fall? or Peruvians rise?
Is it cruel to cage birds and animals? What is the best breed of
horses? Did Wellington say "Up, Guards, and at 'em"? Cremation _v._
Burial. Should immoral men be allowed to retain office? Is suicide
immoral? Opinion of the character of Elizabeth, Parnell, Catherine,
Cleopatra, Rousseau, Jack the Ripper, Semiramis, Lucrezia Borgia,
etc., etc. The present state of the Libel Law; and of the Game Laws.
Is vegetarianism higher? or healthier? Do actors feel their parts?
Should German type be abolished? or book-edges cut? or editions
artificially limited? or organ-grinders? How about
church-and-muffin-bells? Peasant proprietorship. Deer or Highlanders?
Were our ancestors taller than we? Is fruit or market-gardening or
cattle-farming more profitable? Dutch _v._ Italian gardening. What is
an etching? Do dreams come true? Is freemasonry a fraud? or
champagne? are Havanas? Best brand of whiskey? Ought Building and
Friendly Societies to be supervised? Smoking in theatres. Should
gentlemen pay ladies' cab-fares? Genius and insanity. Are cigarettes
poisonous? Is luxury a boon? Thirteen at table, and all other
superstitions--are they foolish? Why young men don't marry. Shall we
ever reach the Pole? How soon will England and the States be at war?
The real sites and people in Thackeray's novels. A universal penny
post? Cheap telegrams and telephones? Is the Bank of England safe?
Are the planets inhabited? Should girls have more liberty? Should
they propose? or wear crinolines? Why not have an unlimited paper
currency? or a decimal system and coinage? or a one-pound note?
Should we abolish the Lords? or preserve the Commons? Why not
euthanasia? Should dramatic critics write plays? Who built the
Pyramids? Are the English the Lost Ten Tribes? Should we send
missions to the heathen? How long will our coal hold out? Who
executed Charles I.? Are the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna trustworthy?
are hieroglyphic readers? Will war ever die? or people live to a
hundred? The best moustache-forcer, bicycle, typewriter, and system
of shorthand or of teaching the blind? Was Sam Weller possible? Who
was the original of Becky Sharp? Of Dodo? Does tea hurt? Do
gutta-percha shoes? or cork soles? Shall we disestablish the church?
or tolerate a reredos in St. Paul's? Is Euclid played out? Is there a
fourth dimension of space? Which is the real old Curiosity Shop? Is
the Continental man better educated than the Briton? Why can't we
square the circle? or solve equations to the _n_th degree? or
colour-print in England? What is the use of South Kensington? Is
paraffin good for baldness? or eucalyptus for influenza? How many
elements are there? Should cousins marry? or the House be adjourned
on Derby Day? Do water-colours fade? Will the ether theory live? or
Stanley's reputation? Is Free Trade fair? Is a Free Press? Is
fox-hunting cruel? or pigeon-shooting? How about the Queen's
staghounds? Should not each railway station bear its name in big
letters? and have better refreshments? Should we permit sky-signs?
Limits of advertisement. Preservation of historic buildings and
beautiful views _v_. utilitarianism. Is the coinage ugly? Should we
not get letters on Sunday? Who really wrote the "Marseillaise"? Are
examinations any real test? Promotion in the Army or the Civil
Service. Is logic or mathematics the primal science? and what is the
best system of symbolic logic? Should curates be paid more and
archbishops less? Should postmen knock? or combine? Are they under
military régime? or underpaid? Should Board School children be taught
religion? The future of China and Japan. Is Anglo-Indian society
immoral? Style or matter? Have we one personality or many?--with a
hundred other questions of psychology and ethics. A graduated income
tax--with a hundred other questions of political economy. Asphalt for
horses. Will the French republic endure? Will America have an
aristocracy? Shall Welsh perish? Is Platonic love possible? Did
Shakespeare write "Coriolanus"? Is there a skull in Holbein's
"Ambassadors"? What is the meaning of Dryden's line, "He was and is
the Captain of the Test"? or of the horny projection under the left
wing of the sub-parasite of the third leg of a black-beetle? Was Orme
poisoned? Are there fresh-water jelly-fishes? Is physiognomy true? or
phrenology? or graphology? or cheiromancy? If so, what are their
laws? Opinions on Guelphs and Ghibellines, fasting displays,
infanticide, the genealogy of the peerage, the origin of public-house
signs, Siberia, the author of Junius, of the Sibylline Books,
werewolves, dyeing one's hair, coffin-ships, standing armies, the
mediaeval monasteries, Church Brotherhoods, state insurance of the
poor, promiscuous almsgiving, the rights of animals, the C. D. Acts,
the Kernoozer Club, emigration, book-plates, the Psychical Society,
Kindergarten, Henry George, Positivism, Chevalier's Coster,
colour-blindness, Total Abstinence, Arbitration, the best hundred
books, Local Option, Women's Rights, the Wandering Jew, the Flying
Dutchman, the Neanderthal skull, the Early Closing movement, the
Prince of Wales, and the Tonic Sol-fa notation. Is there an English
hexameter? Is a perfect translation impossible? Will the coloured
races conquer? Is consumption curable? Is celibacy possible? Can
novels be really dramatised? Is the French school of acting superior
to ours? Should literary men be offered peerages? or refuse them?
Should quack-doctors be prosecuted? Should critics practise without a
license? Are the poor happier or unhappier than the rich? or is Paley
right? Did Paley steal his celebrated watch? Did Milton steal from
Vondel? Is the Salon dead in England? Should duelling be revived?
What is the right thing in dados, hall-lamps, dressing-gowns, etc.?
Should ladies smoke? Is there a Ghetto in England? Anti-Semitism. Why
should London wait? or German waiters? Mr. Stead's revival of
pilgrimages. Is Grimm's Law universal? The abuses of the Civil
Service; of the Pension List. Dr. Barnardo. Grievances of
match-girls; of elementary teachers. Are our police reliable? Is
Stevenson's Scotch accurate? Is our lifeboat service efficient? The
Eastern Question. What is an English fairy-tale? What are the spots
on the sun? Have they anything to do with commercial crises? Should
we spoil the Court if we spared the Black Rod? or the City if we
spared the Lord Mayor? Is chloroforming dangerous? Should armorial
bearings be taxed? or a tradesman's holiday use of his cart? Should
classical texts be Bowdlerised for school-boys? Is the confessional
of value? Is red the best colour for a soldier's uniform or for a
target? Will it rain to-morrow? Ought any one to carry firearms? Do
we permit the cancan on the English stage? or aërial flights without
nets? Where are the lost Tales of Miletus? Should lawyers wear their
own hair? Was the Silent System so bad? Should a novel have a
purpose? Was the _Victoria_ Fund rightly distributed? What is the
origin of Egyptian civilisation? Is it allowable to say, "It's me"?
Every other doubtful point of grammar and--worse still--of
pronunciation; also of etymology. May we say "Give an ovation"? Is
the German Emperor a genius, or a fool? Should bachelors be taxed?
Will the family be abolished? Ensilage. Why was Ovid banished from
Rome? Is the soul immortal? Is our art-pottery bad? Is the Revised
Version of the Bible superior to the Old? Who stole Gainsborough's
picture? Which are the rarest coins and stamps? Is there any sugar in
the blood? Blondes or brunettes? Do monkeys talk? What should you
lead at whist? Should directors of insolvent companies be prosecuted?
Or classics be annotated? Was Boswell a fool? Do I exist? Does
anybody else exist? Is England declining? Shall the costers stand in
Farringdon Street? Do green wall-papers contain arsenic? Shall we
adopt phonetic spelling? Is life worth living?

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