THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

4

My estrangement from Margaret stands in my memory now as something

that played itself out within the four walls of our house in Radnor

Square, which was, indeed, confined to those limits. I went to and

fro between my house and the House of Commons, and the dining-rooms

and clubs and offices in which we were preparing our new

developments, in a state of aggressive and energetic dissociation,

in the nascent state, as a chemist would say. I was free now, and

greedy for fresh combination. I had a tremendous sense of released

energies. I had got back to the sort of thing I could do, and to

the work that had been shaping itself for so long in my imagination.

Our purpose now was plain, bold, and extraordinarily congenial. We

meant no less than to organise a new movement in English thought and

life, to resuscitate a Public Opinion and prepare the ground for a

revised and renovated ruling culture.

For a time I seemed quite wonderfully able to do whatever I wanted

to do. Shoesmith responded to my first advances. We decided to

create a weekly paper as our nucleus, and Crupp and I set to work

forthwith to collect a group of writers and speakers, including

Esmeer, Britten, Lord Gane, Neal, and one or two younger men, which

should constitute a more or less definite editorial council about

me, and meet at a weekly lunch on Tuesday to sustain our general co-

operations. We marked our claim upon Toryism even in the colour of

our wrapper, and spoke of ourselves collectively as the Blue

Weeklies. But our lunches were open to all sorts of guests, and our

deliberations were never of a character to control me effectively in

my editorial decisions. My only influential councillor at first was

old Britten, who became my sub-editor. It was curious how we two

had picked up our ancient intimacy again and resumed the easy give

and take of our speculative dreaming schoolboy days.

For a time my life centred altogether upon this journalistic work.

Britten was an experienced journalist, and I had most of the

necessary instincts for the business. We meant to make the paper

right and good down to the smallest detail, and we set ourselves at

this with extraordinary zeal. It wasn't our intention to show our

political motives too markedly at first, and through all the dust

storm and tumult and stress of the political struggle of 1910, we

made a little intellectual oasis of good art criticism and good

writing. It was the firm belief of nearly all of us that the Lords

were destined to be beaten badly in 1910, and our game was the

longer game of reconstruction that would begin when the shouting and

tumult of that immediate conflict were over. Meanwhile we had to

get into touch with just as many goodminds as possible.

As we felt our feet, I developed slowly and carefully a broadly

conceived and consistent political attitude. As I will explain

later, we were feminist from the outset, though that caused

Shoesmith and Gane great searching of heart; we developed Esmeer's

House of Lords reform scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic

virtues, and we did much to humanise and liberalise the narrow

excellencies of that Break-up of the Poor Law agitation, which had

been organised originally by Beatrice and Sidney Webb. In addition,

without any very definite explanation to any one but Esmeer and

Isabel Rivers, and as if it was quite a small matter, I set myself

to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our columns.

That, indeed, was the peculiar virtue and characteristic of the BLUE

WEEKLY. I was now very definitely convinced that much of the

confusion and futility of contemporary thought was due to the

general need of metaphysical training… The great mass of

people-and not simply common people, but people active and

influential in intellectual things-are still quite untrained in the

methods of thought and absolutely innocent of any criticism of

method; it is scarcely a caricature to call their thinking a crazy

patchwork, discontinuous and chaotic. They arrive at conclusions by

a kind of accident, and do not suspect any other way may be found to

their attainment. A stage above this general condition stands that

minority of people who have at some time or other discovered general

terms and a certain use for generalisations. They are-to fall back

on the ancient technicality-Realists of a crude sort. When I say

Realist of course I mean Realist as opposed to Nominalist, and not

Realist in the almost diametrically different sense of opposition to

Idealist. Such are the Baileys; such, to take their great

prototype, was Herbert Spencer (who couldn't read Kant); such are

whole regiments of prominent and entirely self-satisfied

contemporaries. They go through queer little processes of

definition and generalisation and deduction with the completest

belief in the validity of the intellectual instrument they are

using. They are Realists-Cocksurists-in matter of fact;

sentimentalists in behaviour. The Baileys having got to this

glorious stage in mental development-it is glorious because it has

no doubts-were always talking about training "Experts" to apply the

same simple process to all the affairs of mankind. Well, Realism

isn't the last word of human wisdom. Modest-minded people, doubtful

people, subtle people, and the like-the kind of people William

James writes of as "tough-minded," go on beyond this methodical

happiness, and are forever after critical of premises and terms.

They are truer-and less confident. They have reached scepticism

and the artistic method. They have emerged into the new Nominalism.

Both Isabel and I believe firmly that these differences of

intellectual method matter profoundly in the affairs of mankind,

that the collective mind of this intricate complex modern state can

only function properly upon neo-Nominalist lines. This has always

been her side of our mental co-operation rather than mine. Her mind

has the light movement that goes so often with natural mental power;

she has a wonderful art in illustration, and, as the reader probably

knows already, she writes of metaphysical matters with a rare charm

and vividness. So far there has been no collection of her papers

published, but they are to be found not only in the BLUE WEEKLY

columns but scattered about the monthlies; many people must be

familiar with her style. It was an intention we did much to realise

before our private downfall, that we would use the BLUE WEEKLY to

maintain a stream of suggestion against crude thinking, and at last

scarcely a week passed but some popular distinction, some large

imposing generalisation, was touched to flaccidity by her pen or

mine…

I was at great pains to give my philosophical, political, and social

matter the best literary and critical backing we could get in

London. I hunted sedulously for good descriptive writing and good

criticism; I was indefatigable in my readiness to hear and consider,

if not to accept advice; I watched every corner of the paper, and

had a dozen men alert to get me special matter of the sort that

draws in the unattached reader. The chief danger on the literary

side of a weekly is that it should fall into the hands of some

particular school, and this I watched for closely. It seems

impossible to get vividness of apprehension and breadth of view

together in the same critic. So it falls to the wise editor to

secure the first and impose the second. Directly I detected the

shrill partisan note in our criticism, the attempt to puff a poor

thing because it was "in the right direction," or damn a vigorous

piece of work because it wasn't, I tackled the man and had it out

with him. Our pay was good enough for that to matter a good deal…

Our distinctive little blue and white poster kept up its neat

persistent appeal to the public eye, and before 1911 was out, the

BLUE WEEKLY was printing twenty pages of publishers' advertisements,

and went into all the clubs in London and three-quarters of the

country houses where week-end parties gather together. Its sale by

newsagents and bookstalls grew steadily. One got more and more the

reassuring sense of being discussed, and influencing discussion.