# The Conservative (Lovecraft)/October 1916/In the Editor's Study

In the Editor's Study
The Proposed Authors' Union
It has been more than once remarked that there is an intangible bond of kinship betwixt the highest and the humblest elements of the community. Whilst the bourgeois complacently busy themselves with ​their commonplace, respectable, and unimaginative careers of money-grabbing, the artist and the aristocrat join forces with the ploughman and the pensant in an involuntary mental wave of reaction against the monotony of materialism.
Never has this kinship been more plainly exhibited than in the present movement among a certain class of American professional authors to band themselves together in an honest workingman's union, and to affiliate with that peerless palladium of industrial independence--the well known and far famed American Federation of Labour. That the professions of the average modern author and of the day-labourer are remarkably alike in intellectual requirements, "The Conservative" has long been convinced. Both types show a certain rough vigour of technique which contrasts very strikingly with the polish of more formal times, and both seem equally pervaded with that spirit of progress and enlightenment which manifests itself in destructiveness. The modern author destroys the English language, whilst the modern strike-loving labourer destroys public and private property.
Nor can the ambitious author afford to despise the prodigious power to be gained by entrance into the ranks of organised labour. Since our obliging executive Mr. Wilson has established the precedent of national surrender of the least crook of Labour's gnarled finger, it may be justly assumed that the Writers' Brotherhood, as the most voluble and volatile of all the various bodies of workmen, will have complete power over all departments of the government; at least, until March 4, 1917. From this immeasurable height, our professional scribblers may brandish the quill of authority over a submissive Congress, and extort by due process of law every conceivable sort of advantage over the publishing fraternity, as well as over their less enterprising fellows--the non-union writers. It is barely possible that a strike of authors might be slightly less effective as a threat, than a strike of railway men; but so fond is our present idealistic executive of the beauties of rhetoric, that he would without doubt do much for the cause of find words.
The place of literary radicals and imagist "poets" in this Utopian scheme demands grave consideration. Since the trade union movement requires at least an elementary amount of intelligence in its adherents, and is applied mainly to skilled labour; these deserving iconoclasts of the Amy Lowell school would seem to be left, Othello-like, without an occupation. But a moment's reflection serves to dissolve the difficulty. Here, indeed, is ideal material for that vague and awe-inspiring industrial "Mano Nera" known as the "I.W.W."! The benefits of such a coalition of "vers-libristes" and anarchists are patent to all. Since, save for its law and window breaking, the I.W.W is in a condition of perpetual idleness, its leaders being generally out on strike, or out on bail; its imagistical recruits would naturally be constrained to follow the general example, inaugurating amongst themselves a sympathetic "walkout", and thereby delivering the public ear and the editorial waste basket from the annoyance of their effusions.
It is quite probable that the Brotherhood of Simplified Spellers would have to be created separately from both the American Federation ​of Labour and the I.W.W. Certain members of these learned societies, including expert hod-carriers and pick and shovel engineers, find difficulty enough with our language as now written, and could not possibly tolerate the presence of those reformers who are adding variability to its other faults.
The burning question of contemporary literature apparently concerns the eight-hour day for historians and the minimum wage for sonneteers. These things, and countless others which fret the artistic brain, could easily be solved by unionism. For instance; shall poets be paid by the hour or by the line? The one system discriminates unjustly against such careful workmen as Tom Gray, who consumed seven years on a job only 128 lines long, called "An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard"; whilst the other system is too partial to speedy labourers like Sam T. Coleridge and Bob Southey, who, working together, built the poetic drama of "The Fall of Robespierre" between seven o'clock of an evening and the next noon. Also, pay by the line is unfair to writers of Alexandrines like Mike Drayton, while it unduly favours tetrameter bards like Sam Butler and Walt Scott, and leaves a bitter dispute to be settled amongst the ballad-mongers; who sometimes reckon their verses by long lines of fourteen syllables each, and at other times double the number of lines, the long heptameters being split up into alternate lines of eight and six syllables, respectively.
Amateur journalism, because of its free avenues of expression, would doubtless be suppressed as a hotbed of "scabs" by the Gomperses and the Giovanittis of organised literature. Since it is the prevailing notion of trade unionism that no man has the right to labour without supporting a union and assuming the insignia of industrial blackmail, it may easily be deduced that literary unionism would utterly forbid all thought or expression by outsiders; and that it would, if necessary, resort to violence in cases of stubborn authorship by United members. Whether this violence would consist of stoning or of satire, is as yet uncertain.
A rather perplexing aspect of the case is afforded by the classic authors. These writers, having lived before the dawn of the New Slavery, are all necessarily non-union, wherefore a man who reads their works must logically be boycotted or placed upon the "unfair" list by the modern Knights of Grub Street. The manner of establishing such a boycott would be interesting to determine; but the action will probably never be necessary, since but few up-to-date persons over touch or peruse classic literature.
Looking ahead, as is the custom of all good radicals, the student may discern an age in which the whole domain of art: literary, pictorial, sculptural, architectural, and musical; will be placed upon a strictly union basis. Indeed, the modern Huns are already proving their efficient progressiveness by destroying the offensively beautiful non-union architecture of mediaeval religion in Belgium and Northern France. "Down with the cathedrals, Comrace von Teufel" cries Bill Hohenzollern, head of the Berlin Butchers' Local No. 1914, "for they bear not the union label"!
Concerning trade unionism among authors as a whole, "The ​Conservative" will not venture here to render an opinion. Be it sufficient for him to say, that it would at least interest him to behold a new folly in a field whose potentialities of fatuity he had thought already exhausted.
Revolutionary Mythology
Events in our little sphere of amateurdom sometimes coincide remarkably with those of the world outside. The announcement in United circles of Mr. Henry Clapham McGavack's forthcoming essay on "Preliminaries of the American Revolution", wherein some hoary Yankee myths will be dissected, comes almost simultaneously with the storm of resentment awaked among professional American patriots by the lamentable faux pas of Prof. Wilson's pacifistical Secretary of War; who asserted in a campaign speech on October 16, that the Mexican banditti of today are comparable to the American revolutionists of Gen. Washington's army.
Secretary Baker has undoubtedly perpetrated another characteristically Wilsonian blunder in drawing a parallel between the pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon rebels of 1775, and the herd of half-breed swine, bent only on plunder, who are grunting, shooting, cavorting, and misbehaving generally below our southern border; but the loud denunciation comes rather from the truth he has let slip, than from the erroneous inferences he has drawn.
The American Revolution has created a more marvellous fund of genuine legendary lore than any other event in modern history. Not only to the proletariat, but to the bulk of our intelligent countrymen, the colonists who caused the withdrawal of America from the British Empire stand forth as heroes unsullied; as veritable Galahads, Bayards, and Sidneys. It is soberly believed by grown men, that the defiers of George III were a host of terrestrial Seraphim, the like of whom have never been known before or since. Willingly enough do we confess weaknesses on both sides of other intestine struggles through which our race has passed. In reflecting upon the Civil Wars which culminated in Cromwell's usurpation, we all acknowledge on the one hand that King Charles I was weak, that his promises were not inviolable, and that many of his adherents were luxurious and dissipated men; and on the other hand that the rebels were hasty, cruel, coarse, hypocritical, and animated by many absurdly false notions. Neither Charles nor Cromwell is to the descendants of his followers a supernal being "sans peur et sans reproche." But in mentioning the Continental army of 1775-1783, the average American assumes an unconscious accent of prayer, and damns any possible blasphemer with the true fervour of the fanatic. That the band of American colonists who seceded from the authority of Great Britain in 1775 contained at least several human beings, is well proven by careful students. That these beings possessed their full share of what we call "human nature", is likewise not unknown. Which compels "The Conservative" to smile a trifle at the legends of Revolutionary Gods and Heroes preserved by each Yankee fireside, and transmitted both orally and verbally to each succeeding generation.
​The American Revolution arose from a fatal misunderstanding between the Englishmen at home and those upon this continent. Neither side can claim the exclusive sanction of Heaven, nor must either side be blackened with the imputation of Infamy. Saxon fought Saxon as men always fight men. The record of each army is as clean, or as soiled as that of any other body of embattled human creatures who contend under the best traditions of civilised warfare. That a certain amount of looting, burning, and other irregularities existed on both sides, is no cause for surprise or indignation in the mind of the student or historian, for these things are inseparable from armed conflict of any sort, though training may modify them. Even the sainted Crusaders of old were less Christian toward the Saracens than we would like to imagine.
If the time has come when Revolutionary mythology may be placed in honoured banishment beside the similar lore of infant Rome: if men may at last be suffered openly to speak the truth about those brave Britons and Colonials of yesterday, it is to be hoped that justice may be done that most maligned class in all America--the loyalists, or "Tories". In the year 1775 this country was a legitimate part of the British domain, under the rightful authority of the King and his Parliament. The rebellious decision of a majority of the people can certainly form no ground for complaint against those Americans who felt that their duty lay with the existing government, and who upheld their Sovereign's rule with valour and distinction. That selfish interest dwelt beneath the acts of the "Tories" is often asserted, and may in some instances be true; but it is only the most crass ignorance or most malicious prejudice which can thus defame the multitude of patriotic American Royalists who willingly suffered or died in the service of the third George.
The Symphonic Ideal
Just a year ago "The Conservative" had occasion to refer to his contemporary, "The Symphony", whose discontinuance last July is a matter of such keen regret amongst United members. Though never formally affiliated with the Association, it was widely known in amateur journalism as an exponent of the acquisition of happiness through conscientious service to humanity. That so benignant a journal should lack the support necessary for continuance, is a circumstance reflecting unfavourably upon the mental temper of our ago. We live in the midst of a new and outspoken cynicism; the result of declining orthodoxy on the part of the religious, and of aimless iconoclasm on the part of the philosophical. The happiness once acknowledged in our minor joys and moments of respite from the burden of life, is now laughed at and despised as a mere narcotic to the intelligence; and we are bidden to dismiss as unreal those simple and honest delights which alone make human existence endurable. If aught but the severe satisfaction of perfect intellectual, artistic, aesthetic, and moral beauty chance to please us, we are straightway damned as superficial, and censured for our childish triviality of taste.
There recently appeared before the public a rather unsophisticated volume entitled "Pollyanna", which preached a sweetly artificial doctrine of converting ills into blessings by the contemplation ​of possible calamities still more direful. After a period of enthusiastic laudation from the "jeune fille" type of admirer, poor "Pollyanna" became the target of every penny-a-line hack reviewer and little-wit in Grub Street. They loftily demonstrated that the easing of melancholy by force of imagination is a vastly unscientific thing. Impossible, they vowed! Or, even if possible, it ought not to be; since 'tis a frightfully callow sort of mental regimen, quite unworthy of the mature mind! They all swore 'tis an afront to the eternal verities to be able to stop thinking of the world's evil and to gather a little joy from that idyllic goodness and virtue of which the world undoubtedly possesses, or seems to possess, a little. The "New York Tribune", in fact, deemed the inoffensive "Pollyanna" sufficiently culpable to merit a sneering editorial.
So runs the worldly-wise current of twentieth-century life! Your modern philosopher had rather be mature and miserable, than childlike and contented; and he deems you a monstrous imbecile if you can be happy at a time when he thinks you have not sufficient cause to be happy. Heaviness of spirit, he doth asseverate, is a sacred obligation of every thoughtful and responsible citizen. If you lack woes of your own, then go mourn at the wretched state of mankind in general!
"The Conservative" confesses to no little amusement at the wailing of those worshippers of morbid maturity. He even ventures to exhibit a leaning toward the side of immaturity; for is not maturity but the full-blown precursor of decay! It is dangerous to dabble in realities, and if more of us were able to retain the happy illusions of our infancy, those illusions would be so much nearer truth. Can any of our apostles of sophistication define what they mean by real happiness? Is it not more likely that all happiness is unreal; a golden fabric woven by fairies from the moonbeams of yesterday, and visible, like the Milky Way, only when more garish and conspicuous things are banished from the sight? A moment of retrospection, a snatch of song, a cadence of rhythm, a glance at the blue empyrean, the playing of the sun with the leaves of green trees, a chance act of benevolence--all these things sometimes bring what we uncultured barbarians are pleased to call happiness. Must we be utterly condemned if such happiness be found to have no cause save in physiological reactions or psychological stimuli. It is certainly grateful surcease from the pain of living, and what more could we desire? Is not fragrance fragrance, whether it come from the woodland violet or the stately cedar? If these simple pleasures be only drugs to help us forget reality, then let us accept the oblivion they offer. Nature designed them to soothe the roughnesses of our existence, and we should accept the gift with gratitude, rather than reject it with scorn. On the pleasures of the fancy rests all the mighty framework of art, poesy, and song. Stark, mature reality leads to the suicide's vault.
"The Conservative" has more than once been rather severely taken to task for his love of the idyllic happiness of the unreal. His pastoral verses have been scorned as archaic nonsense, whilst his whole literary style was condemned a year ago by a learned Jew, who with Semitic shrewdness declared that those pages, with their reverence for the storied past, savour of the "play world". But "The ​Conservative" is not unduly disturbed. He will linger on in his "play world", delighting in the pleasures of the imagination, calling up the shades of his beloved eighteenth century at will, and being as childish as he chooses, till second childhood itself overtake him. He may grow grey with years, but he will not accept dull "maturity", save when some pacifist, Anglophobe, or simplified speller shall provoke him too far, and compel an occasional excursion into the bleak regions of unimaginative actuality! We are all much too serious, and too little disposed to promote the comfort of society. One refreshing zephyr of naturalness, whether in the primer-like and humour-lacking form of a "Pollyanna" or in the subtler shape of a "Symphony", is to our weary spirits worth an hundred laboured essays on the art of correct thinking or the science of being wisely miserable. Wherefore, though Reason may goad us on in our sterner search for Truth, let us not condemn the happiness which blooms by the roadside, nor cast aside unthinkingly the protecting cheerfulness of the Symphonic Ideal.