VULGARITY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1372, 24 February 1912, Page 3

VULGARITY.

Two paragraphs appeared in last Thursday's issue of this paper; it was fortunate that they appeared simultaneously; they ought really to have been printed side by 6ido. One described how the villagers of Goudhurst in Kent had positively had tho impudence to perform a pantomime of their own, without any help from aesthetic persons of the upper middle-class. Tho result was (according to your critic) "tho knock-about stage-dog, tho red-nosed comedian," etc.; all "naked in their funda-1 mental vulgarity." The other paragraph, which Bhould be put side by side with this, was that which said that Lord Oranmore and Browne (let us call him Browne) gave an entertainment in a schoolroom in Ireland; and all his tenants forbade their children to go near tho place. Lord Browno's cntortainment, I feel sure, contained .no vulgarity. Yet the strange Irish people would not patronise it. Tho two incidents,' 6et side by side, may explain many things. Tho thing they explain best is why the Irish pooplo are now so near to self-government; and why the English people are still so far off it. My own instinct is that nothing can bo vulgar if it is merely comic. To that sudden surge of mental sickness which I call the dislike of vulgarity it is absolutely necessary that there should be some profanation; that is, some hint of the wrong kind of seriousness. I do not think a man with. his noso painted red is in the least vulgar. He is too ugly to bo 'vulgar. I do, think an insolent woman with her cheeks painted red is vulgar; she is vulgar because sho is serious. She is really defiling ideas that are beautiful, such as youth and human blood. I do ■not think a comic actor sitting down suddenly on a butter-slide is vulgar; that is a collapse, a confession of human weakness; and there is nothing vulgar about the idea of confession. He does it on purpose, because he is an actor. But he docs it on purpose to remind ns that he might do it by accident. But when a man sits down as does the dressy Mr. Moss in Mr. Bolloc's novel who "took his left coat tail and his right coat tail in his left hand and his right hand, parted them and sat down most ungracefully"— then I do call that vulgar. It is a vulgarity because it is not an accident, but a horrible and devilish design. There must be a touch of seriousness and selfsatisfaction in .the vulgarity which 1 dislike. If vulgarity means anything else than this I do not dislike it. Another vulgar clement, which almost always goes with seriousness, is impudence. . One of the worst forms of this can bo found in those curt business abbreviations which have been invented by the" commercial and comfortable classes. It .is not rude to expand your conversation with oaths and gory expletives; it is not mde because it is an expansion cf tho interview, and indicates a certain pleasure in : the companionship. But it is rude to curtail your conversations with abbreviations; for it indicates that the other man is not one on whom words need bo wasted, especially complete-words. When a..navvy in a third-class carriage tells mo-that'some crimson bloke gave him only two sanguinious shillings and a crudoric threepenny bit in return for an incarnadined half-crown, he seems to mo perfectly pure from, the faintest fleck of vulgarity. But if a man says to me' "Under the circs'' I call it vulgarity. If a man says, to me "For self and friend" I call it vulgarity. And so far as 1 1 can analyse., 'my. own psychological jump of resistance I think it vulgar because it is impudent. • "Umstances" is not perhaps a vitally'valuable word'taken by itself; but why should he not endure my company during such time as is necessary to say it? "For myself nnd my friend' is not so interminable a formula as.to.present any comparison between the pain which it's recital gives to him and the pain which its omission gives to me. Tho language of the very poor is never vulgar, because it is never hurried and cheap. Owing to the practical working of our glorious Constitution (the pride and envy of the world) most of the very poor aro in one respect exactly like the very rich. They are unemployed.

Any drama created by democracy will undoubtedly be full of Ted noses and knock-about dogs. If you do not like it, follow the example of the tenants of Lord Browne, and stop away.. Nobody is forced to go to Goudhurst and interfere with what the citizens of that one free community choose to do. The visitor may criticise Goudhurst for the same reason that he criticises Switzerland; first because it is small. • secpnd because it chooses to govorn itself: but most of all becau?e it does it uncommonly well. The only hope for modern England is that it may begin to build up again from the most primary cells, the family first, and then tho village, and then the countryside, and then—who knows but what we may havo a country at last? But such a development will bo utterly impossible if the' rather morbid refinement of the great towns is to bo made the test of every clumsy and casual outburst cf rural festivity.' It is vain to tell mo that th© tradition of these vulgar pantomimes is from the towns. Every tradition must bo from somewhere; and some of tho healthiest States havo been founded by traditions that came from outside. But 'there is no popular art or popular government without a tradition. If our our atrocious nnd oppressive land system does not permit the peasants to have a tradition of their own, they must get a tradition from the towns; but lot us of the towns stand aside and see how they deal with the tradition. Do not let us go down to GoudhuTst and make it aesthetic—that is, truly vulgar. I, for one, will stop away from Goudhurst: though, when I hear of tho red nose and the knock-about dogs, my temptation "very sore.—G. X. Chesterton, in the Daily News."