The Rural Rider Returns

...It authors...

...is of a piece...

...Thus the writer of the introduction to the new thing, indeed, about him was practical...

...May 12, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL II THE RURAL RIDER RETURNS By THEODORE MAYNARD I T would not much matter that William Cobbett* the ordinary meaning of the phrase, an educated man...

...He concludes his directions mind 1" and then, "I cannot look at them without for the making of rushlights (it was in a day when knowing that we belong to a fallen race 1" candles were taxed) by saying: "You may do any sort But Cobbett saw something else besides the catheof work by this light...

...and at any Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: rate, you would have one evil less...

...He had been told of the It was characteristic of Cobbett, too, that the man benefits of the "glorious Reformation," but as he rode who wrote the most amusing, perhaps the only amus- over England on his horse, he looked at the catheing grammar we have-and certainly the simplest- drals, and cried, first, "the men who built these monushould, even in a handbook of domestic science, bring ments to the service of God were not darkened in in a controversial flavor...

...since, also, the young who foresaw or accomplished everything that can ever novelists have the tradition I have described, their be done with the French language, commenting on books form a curious modern romanticism...

...and if reading be to your taste, drals...

...We should think it rather odd," writes Mr...

...These were where the squire openly disapproved of Cobbett's inevitable in a man who spoke and wrote so much as politics...

...If his indignation at the robbery of the and had amplified and corrected his book-learning poor was boundless, he would have been content with (which was thorough if limited) by that rarest of very little: the mitigation of the lot of the poor...

...It might open he set out to tell the people who had been robbed their eyes...

...In that fascinating little book he gave cepted from Hume, about the making of the New directions to men living on a wage of eight shillings Forest...

...It was characteristic of him that, despairing of any"Historians," he said, "should be careful how they thing coming to the farm-laborers from above, he set make statements relative to places which are within to work to show them how they might improve their the scope of the reader's inspection...

...What portant things to say...

...exactly what had happened...

...but it is impossible to say he was a dangerous demagogue...

...An entire group of the Russian form for Miss Patsy Burke...

...and asked It is still customary in some quarters to regard this why the churches had been built on such a scale...

...He was too English to have been revolutionary original research in history, he had absorbed Lingard in action...

...Everyone should chase a house which he still calls an abbey...

...they are odorous and stimulated throughWar and Peace...

...He was one of by any feeling that it was not "good form" to tell the few writers in English whose sole object was to unpleasant truths...

...And it was later he was fond of calling the "thing": that is, the war to be his amusement to convict dignitaries in Church against French liberty, the national debt, septennial and state and literature (not even excepting the great parliaments, rotten boroughs (Sarum he always reDr...

...Lewis Melville's to be anything else but an English farmer...

...He "could these churches have been built...

...who can deserve to have none...

...He you may read the foul libels, the lies and abuse, which saw what Goldsmith saw and-in addition-the cause are circulated gratis about me by the Society for Pro- of the evil: moting Christian Knowledge, as well by rushlight as Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, you can by the light of taxed candles...

...Cole has us in his Rural Rides how he passed the door of the given us a carefully documented work, he is without squire at Trotten and was looked at "uncommonly Mr...

...He saw the abject misery of the poor...

...and to pay a tax for the deception are a little too A breath can make them, as a breath has made: much for even modern loyalty openly to demand...

...But his business in life was not with such did Cobbett, and invariably without premeditation...

...He book as a reckless romance, but that view can be held counted the churches and found that, upon the basis only by those ignorant of the history of the period of the figures that were currently accepted, there it deals with, or by those who suppose that a man could have been no more, upon an average, than twelve must be inaccurate because he is bellowing at the men in every parish...

...Yet he is still treated as reply could one make except that the man was violent though he were a quack with a gift of lucid expres- and eccentric and a trouble-maker...

...But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, But before the outburst, he had been very specific in When once destroyed, can never be supplied...

...Johnson) of solicisms of diction...

...How then," he demanded, top of his voice the truth that he has discovered...

...It was designed to make a great impres- preposterous profanity by which one chance rich man sion upon the minds of its readers, and it did...

...And make it...

...The with the thrill of harsh red notes of determined first two pictures are of Russian exiles as they exist, anarchy, and now, in the uncertainty of its affairs, it and a third picture is of the exile without hope and has receded into the distant East...

...for whom Cobbett wrote, but also, and more espe- had breakfast on the altar, or cleaned his teeth in the cially, the sophisticated and miseducated who raise font...

...He had introduced Hampshire hogs into the United *William Cobbett, by G. K. Chesterton...

...It had found his neighbors on Long Island to have been...

...And it sums up the final truth about than a sense of inferiority to the squire, of whom, Cobbett when it says : "The cause he felt within him however, I had never heard speak before...

...This bett's corn" into England, as one means of helping was no doubt why, knowing what he knew, he was to make the peasants of Surrey as independent as he able to live and die in the Church of England...

...And the governing class which house in Kensington, or in his reference to his Regishe attacked represents him as a contentious dema- ter as the "tuppenny trash"-was practical, as everygogue...

...With this end in view he wrote his Cottage ceeded to demolish the myth, which Lingard had ac- Economy...

...And if he was an egotist, his marian was imprisoned from i8io to 18I2-which egotism, as Hazlitt has pointed out, had very little was that he had protested against the flogging at Ely vanity in it...

...Here we have, as always in the case he says, "with the cheek drawn upon from the left of Mr...

...Chesterton says, "that stand out to lent emphasis the same things that Lingard-whom tell the main tale of English history, even to a man the Cambridge historians call our only historian who had never opened a book...

...That there Cobbett faithfully records the fact, even in those cases are minor inconsistencies is true enough...

...could one make to a man who was right...

...Everything in his full and pracput what he had to say as plainly as words could tical mind came out at the appropriate occasion...

...As Mr...

...And when Cobbett worthy of the name-had deliberately put with a dis- saw the new country houses, built like palaces of Gerarming caution...

...Cobbett saw the crime, and in a towering rage supercilious eyebrows at his name...

...people...

...Chesterton has written the best study of Cobto pretend that he had no ambition, he never wished bett that we have so far had...

...He tells biography is unsatisfactory, and though Mr...

...Turgenieff counted rather less...

...For if he had not studied Yet in spite of his violence of speech he was exvery profoundly the theory of politics, he saw more ceedingly moderate in policy, which is, perhaps, why clearly than any man of his time the practical needs the popular rising which he might have led never took of his country...

...Generally, as denouement, they have a hopeless first pre-war enthusiasm for Nastasia Phillipowna and inarticulate suicide in the back room of an all-night Barashkoff of The Idiot, and for Prince Andre of dance hall...

...The Scotch economists had told Cobbett that EngThe Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge land had increased in population and prosperity since was angry with Cobbett because he had promoted a the Reformation and as a consequence of the Reformalittle too much Christian knowledge for the Society's tion...

...New York: States during his residence here, and as he says, had Dodd, Mead and Company...

...2.00...

...Quite a number of novels, which I which Russian exiles take the leading parts...

...things in a historian, the sight of his own shrewd eyes...

...It is a theory false and unjust...

...facts...

...This is all the more What Cobbett got from Lingard was a corroborato Cobbett's credit in view of the fact that he rarely tion of something to which he had already had the drank anything but milk...

...This he had gogue...

...stocked the country with them...

...It has left behind it for the study and pity of But one must first sum up the elements which have Europe its countless emigres ; and the young French erected the generalization in the minds of those men writers, still fascinated by the "Russian mystery," are in France who today are writing novels and plays in hard at work...

...I have a friend in England who brews material bread from the poor...

...He could the keeping of pigs, geese, turkeys, rabbits and goats, believe his eyes...

...But we can hardly see the vividness...

...has been neglected as a writer if it were not that He had nothing to unlearn and he was not hampered he is generally misunderstood...

...his practical directions...

...We might think it strange witness...

...WANDERING RUSSIANS By GOUVERNEUR PAULDING A 1 PICTURESQUE theory of the fatalism and the war, Russia existed through its music rather than uselessness of the Russian exile has arisen in through its literature in the minds of young French France...

...He returned the look, as of his subject...

...And there is no writer who had more im- nobody had an answer to what he had to say...

...ple...

...Chesterton's capacity for swiftly seizing the heart hard" by that gentleman...

...It was "new and good, manly and simof English militiamen by German mercenaries...

...The labels "Tory" and "Radical" do For he was the last tribune of the English not apply to him...

...Though he was a bett as an inveterate stirrer-up of strife, while giving master of abuse he never relied upon it, but only upon the fact, carefully suppresses the reason why the gram- plain common sense...

...Chesterton, a book full of brilliant and elocorner of the mouth, expressive of anything rather quent passages...

...if a stockbroker had built a villa and habitually reThe value of Cobbett's book lies in its vigor and ferred to it as a church...

...for to be deceived Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade...

...Not so long ago it existed with three pictures rather than with argument...

...It is read it-not only the simple and uncultivated people precisely as if he had gone to live in the parish church...

...To this Cardinal Gasquet, the best of the Chesterton, "if a profiteer had a country house that historians of the Reformation in England, is sufficient he called the cathedral...

...Chesterton says, Cobbett had a a week as to the brewing of beer, the making of bread, strange and high and heroic sort of faith...

...It might even open them very wide...

...It is therefore possible to question man princes, and the older country houses of the rich Cobbett's tact, but it is not possible-except in the which were religious buildings transformed to domescases of a few minor details, as in his suggestion that tic uses, the tale of English history was almost comAnne Boleyn was Henry's daughter-to question his plete...

...He was always plain William Cob- people...

...the salting of mutton and beef and the curing of ham, He was no doubt all the better for not being, in with the intention of making penury less oppressive...

...was his concern to point out not so much that the His directions in Cottage Economy are always clear reformers took away the supersubstantial bread as the and specific...

...In return he tried 12 THE COMMONWEAL May 12, 1926 in vain to introduce Indian, or, as he called it, "Cob- Cobbett had no great interest in theology...

...Shortly after, it existed as the salvation of will spread to the United States-as already it has France and of Europe in those early and momentous pervaded England-without a corrective...

...And he pro- own lot...

...He wrote all his books and pamphlets, and But anyone who will take the trouble to read Cobbett not only his English Grammar, "especially for the must be struck with the fact that all that he wrote use of soldiers, sailors, apprentices, and ploughboys...

...anything less than the Faith...

...evidence of his own eyes...

...Jean out by ether, morphine, cocaine, heroin, and the fumes Cocteau, who reminds one of a prudent, worldly, and of alcohol...

...A great piece of robaccording to Cobbett's recipe, and the result is some bery had occurred, and he cried: "Stop thief 1" of the best beer I ever tasted...

...He had written his History of the Protestant economists to be liars...

...shall not name, are the result-they are selling very In the first place, Russia existed for them in their well...

...bett, the English farmer, and though it would be idle Mr...

...Cobbett looked at England, and knew the taste...

...clergy, the burden of taxation, the crowded prisons We may legitimately be indifferent to the indiffer- and poorhouses, and, above all, the misery under which ence of the pedants who, in too many cases, have the farm-laborers lay...

...May 12, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 13 Cobbett was bitterly attacked in his own time for When he came across a squire, as sometimes hapturning from Toryism to Radicalism, and he is still pened, who was kind to his tenants and workmen, reproached for his political inconsistency...

...If he was edition of the English Grammar brought out by the violent, the rage which was the breath of his life Oxford University Press, in his wish to picture Cob- always left his head quite cool...

...they are brilliantly illuminated with the successful Rimbaud in his accurate and inventive noting glory of great names and the charm of very common of sensation, has confessed as the next step the ones-the Russian form for the Duchess of Norfolk tremendous influence of the Diaghileff ballet, pleasantly mingling in undocumented ignorance with Petrouchka, Sacre du Printemps...

...They are his own difficult and exquisite prose, had said: "It is romantic with their fatal figures desperately careless as simple as a musical phrase...

...He saw everywhere churches Reformation...

...The pro- If Cobbett was eccentric in many ways, his eccenfessors find it hard to believe that this farmer upon tricity, when it was not humorous-as in the famous his horse knew anything about the sciences of political incident of his hanging up of the gridiron outside his economy and history...

...much too large for the existing population...

...These were based his statements upon Lingard, and put with vio- the things, as Mr...

...There after another has been able to commandeer or puris still nothing better of its kind...

...Not a bad sort of egotism for a man to have I It is easy enough to say that Cobbett knew nothing The root of the objection to Cobbett is really that about history or politics...

...Rimbaud, ways inexplicable, enigmatic...

...And he was exceedingly dangerous to what mastered while a soldier in Canada...

...and, if he had not engaged in any place...

...Yet it is always ferred to as the Accursed Hill) venal and incomless difficult for a man of Cobbett's class to grasp a petent ministers, non-resident and richly beneficed political principle than to use language exactly...

...Thus, just before of life-with their love which is so near to hatred...

...This may be partly due to pedantry...

...What other reply sion...

...And, since writers turned toward the complete immediacy of the reticent souls beneath these names can scarcely be musical expression and attempted a compromise be- known to the young novelist, their psychology is altween their art and that of the composer...

...The re- days when its weight was thrown, gallantly and with action to an unjust generalization is both intellectual insufficient preparation, against the central empire to and emotional: I have preferred to answer this one the tune of 1,700,000 dead...

...Well, he was a demathat he knew nothing about grammar...

...dismissed Cobbett unread...

...There was too mighty and multiform to have been fed with we have the man...