BOOKS:
A FRENCH FRIEND OF THE EMPIRE.* A FRENCH FRIEND OF THE EMPIRE.* ONE of the many advantages to England, and by no means the least, of that entente cordiale with France of which we hear so much, and if the German Emperor persists shall hear so much more, is that she is able once again to enjoy the advantage of friendly criticism in a form in which she can listen to it. "Splendid isolation" is at times a bracing discipline. It gives concentration, but it also produces narrow- ness. If we are not on calling terms with our neighbours, we perhaps gain a little in escaping a certain. amount of idle gossip, but we lose too in not getting their opinion of others, and still more of ourselves. It was a salutary lesson doubtless for us during the Boer War to hear something of what Europe thought and felt about us. But the criticitim was so mingled with abuse that we could hardly be expected to listen to it ; and, indeed, in some cases, even if we tried to be dispassionate, we could not quite believe it. This was especially the case with France. We could not believe—and a book like this proves that we were right—that the French really thought quite so badly of us, and that their outburst of recrimination and vilipending was a deliberate and final opinion, and not largely a temporary effervescence.
Now genuine French criticism is just what helps us most. The French have exactly those qualities in which we are most deficient. At the same time, they are not too far away or too differently situated to understand us. France and England have come down the centuries of history side by side. Though France has parted with some traditions and obliterated some of the forms which we have conserved, she knows what it is to be an ancient and historic nation, with many elements in her society, aristocratic, commercial, democratic ; with a Church, an Army, a Navy, great pro- fessions, arts and sciences, organised and claiming weight by immemorial prescription as well as present activity. She knows what it is to administer free colonies and subject races ; she knows and feels the meaning of the "white man's burden." She, too, is "a land of old and just renown," and her judgment is "the judgment of our peer." Aspecially she can make allowance, when she is in the mood to do so, for our difficulties. During the Boer War she was not in that mood. She is in that mood now, perhaps was never more so. We can all enjoy, also, the light touch, the artistic presentation, the crisp statement, the note a little satirical but never too serious or solemn, of a good French critic. If we are to have our merits and our foibles tactfully described, if we are to be shown ourselves as others see us without being offended, a cultivated French gentleman is the very man to perform the office. And in Vicomte d'Humieres we have just the critic required. For this is what he is,—pre-eminently a cultivated French gentleman who knows and likes us; who is, indeed, an Anglophil, but not to the foolish extent of sinking his own nationality. He does not profess to go very deep. The book, he tells us, "has no pretensions to academic harmony or to sociological serenity. It is a collection of impressions." But they are not the impressions of a hasty traveller or of a single visit; and his carefully written introduction contains not a little wisdom, as the essence distilled from the wit of the subse- quent pages.
He can still admire the old British Constitution praised by Montesquieu a century and a half ago, and since so much abused both at home and abroad. Notwithstanding all changes, he yet sees in it what Aristotle considered the best of all polities,—a " mixed " polity, one in which various elements blend and balance. Aristocracy is there. "It still plays a preponderating part." And plutocracy blends happily and healthily with aristocracy. "As for the people," he remarks pregnantly (the italics are ours), "it is • Through Isle and Empire. By the Vicomte Robert d'Humieres. Trans- lated b lexander Teixeira de Mates. With a Prefatory Letter by Rudy:1r4 Kipling. Loudon; W.Heineunann. [66.1 difficult to assert that it is happier here than elsewhere; but at least it does not exhaust Waif in hatreds and revolts, and in any case it is assured of two supreme benefits : liberty and justice." "Perfidious Albion" is a phrase invented by Napoleon's "reptile" Press. It caught on because it gave an excuse for French inefficiency. England has no monopoly of honesty, but "the love of 'fair play' and of truth has made its way into her political morals." In the matter of perfidy England is "an artless schoolgirl beside Russia." England is also generous, and Englishmen are humane. They are
reserved, no doubt, and stoical. Are they hypocritical ? Is their virtue " cant " ? This is a wore tremendous question. "There is no greater effort of impartiality," says M. d'Humieres, "possible to a French brain than to explain cant and make excuses for it." He makes the effort manfully, but it remains abominable and inexplicable to him, because he does not see that its practice corre- sponds to its profession in the highest and lowest classes of English society, though he admits that it may more nearly do so in the puritanical middle class. M. d'Humieres makes a mistake here which he does not make elsewhere. He does not realise that morally, as well as politically, England is not thus divided into water-tight compartments. Conscience is not the monopoly, fortunately, of the Noncon- formists, nor Puritanism, in its best sense, of the middle class. They will be found, like their oftentimes too much derided embodiment, "respectability," in all classes, and as realities, not hypocrisies, in each and all.
His oracle, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, might have enlightened him a little more on these subjects ; but the last thing that an Englishman, and especially an Englishman like Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, likes to do, is to preach or to mount the high moral horse. Mr. Kipling, it is true, told him he did not like Madame Bovary ; and "the name of D'Annunzio led to a very instructive declaration against eroticism," and the monstrous and excessive iteration of it in Continental fiction, which caused M. d'Humieres to ponder on what he admits, "the chastity of the English novel." Mr. Kipling also gives Lim an explanation in his prefatory letter which we can hardly suppose is serious. Meanwhile, we must note that M. d'Humieres, with all his love and admiration for England, writes on these matters as a Frenchman, with a levity and freedom we cannot always accept, and which will distress some readers. He makes, also, little allowance for religion, which he seems, except in a generic anthropological form,
not to have met or not to have heeded.
As for all the private and public virtues which he thus
generously ascribes to us, let us hope that we have in some measure deserved this testimonial, and if not, let it encourage us to do so in the future. For the rest, the observations he has made, and the pictures he draws of the facts on which his inductions are based, are most agreeable reading. He has had the entree to many delightful socibties and scenes. The khaki warriors returning from the Cape, with their uncritical loyalty to their defeated generals—their stolidity, which to us seemed a danger, appears to him the secret of our success—the streets at Coronation time, with the good-tempered popular participation in the pomp and expenee ; the Wallace Collection ; the English theatres, where he admires the magnificent staging, and does not think it spoils the acting, though most of the plays in truth seem "written for easily-pleased schoolboys " ; the historic glories of Holland House; the water parties on the Thames; Aldershot; Spithead ; the "Visits of Elizabeth,"—are treated one after the other in the same light and happy manner. Take his notes on Henley Regatta :— "We are gathered to see young men in incredible skiffs long and narrow as swords, struggle to pass one another by dipping into the water long implements of wood flattened at the end. Deafening cheers accompany this exertion. The reward of the victors consists of metal cups of most distressing workman- ship The waning sun envelopes thih motley crowd amid the popping of champagne corks. Minstrels in Venetian dominoes pass and sing along the launches. The warm and hazy light of this Constable evening fills the valley."
Take two other scenes of stiller life :—
"Here in Hampshire is the real English country, green, wooded with fine trees,oleasant villages on grass-girt rivers, a look of comfort and security. One feels here respect for the past, con- tent with the present, confidence in the future. A glorious forest, planted by Willi& Rufus, spreads shades that are never touched over moss and ferns. Here the melancholy Jacques of As You Like It dreams, leaning against an oak soon, on the footpaths you shall hear the steps of Elosalind."
"Here is Osborne, the princely residence to which every August used to bring 'Auntie,' as the good people of the island called their late Queen ; and next, spreading its lawns down to -the very waters, a nobleman's seat, a proud mansion standing between trees three centuries old and the eternal waves, evoking an ideal of aristocratic life, a security of moral dignity and tradition which the land of M. Mesureur no longer knows."
From Isle to Empire,—from England the Vicomte con- ducts us through Egypt to India, Egypt with its immemorial background, frothed over by the noi■sy wave of cosmopoli- tanism. Then India. But this the reader must criticise for himself. It is all the kaleidoscope of the Plain Tales from. the Hills and of Sim, painted by Mr. Rudyard Kipling's French friend, as seen partly through Mr. Rudyard Kipling's magic spectacles, partly with the Frenchman's own sharp eyes. For Mr. Rudyard Kipling is the "poet of India," and M. d'Humieres is his prophet. The French friend does justice—nay, more than justice—to our diligent, con- scientious, and equal sway. The restless energy and intelli- gent force concealed beneath Lord Curzon's enamel of suavity and courtesy, the prosperity and liberty of the multitudes, the corruption which is sometimes the shadow of the peace and independence of the Maharajahs,—all the wonderful mise-en-scene, the amazing variety of buildings, palace, temple, ruin, with every diversity of natural setting at Calcutta, Benares, Jeypore, Tughlakabad, Fatehpur-
Sikri, Bijapur, the paradisal gardens of Kashmir, the witcheries of the Taj, the strange fragdients of old-world French dominion embedded in our own, are all here. M. d'Humieres does not, even with these last to stir old rancour., grudge us our Empire for a moment. He recognises that we have toiled, have lived and have died, for it. "If any rival challenges it, the answer is, he must show that he can do better." But space does not allow us to touch on all that these brilliant and lightsome pages suggest. The book is no common book, and comes at no common moment. The author is modest ; he professes to tell us little new ; he calls himself a humble follower of Taine. But his very modesty avoids the magistral complacence which was Taine's foille, and be may, perhaps, influence English readers the more. He hopes much from the " understanding " he is so anxious to help. We must be grateful, at any rate, for the entertainment be has given us ; still more, for the generous and gallant spirit which inspires him. That England and France should put aside their secular jealousies, and enter on an era of cordial and constant consideration and comity, would indeed mean much for both countries, and much thereby for the world, much for the "gaiety of nations," and not a little for their true happiness.
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