THE FINEDON BACHELOR
REGINALD UNDERWOOD
Some biographical details and a
Selection of his writings
By
Barry Van-Asten
‘it looks as though we are all going to be
Shakespeared
to death, if you will forgive the forlorn pun.’
(1)
It is a sad fact that
the author, Reginald Underwood is only known, if he is known at all, for a
handful of novels published by the Fortune Press which are either hard or
impossible to find and an autobiography which in fact, says very little about
him. But Reginald Underwood was much more than a minor novelist found in a few
footnotes and whispered about by a small group of aficionado’s, he was a
concert pianist and music teacher, an author of short stories and articles, a
Humanist of deep-thought who wrote on various philosophical and social
subjects; a Freethinker writing on religious issues and theological points of
contention, but he was also a man interested in history, particularly the
history of the village in which he lived and died, Finedon, in Northamptonshire,
a place also blessed by the worthy bones of the poet, Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848-1867) whose tragic death at the tender age of nineteen had devastating
effects upon the older poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins (1844-1889). Little is known
of Underwood’s background and some even believe his name to be a pseudonym but
he was very real and born in Finedon and as we shall see had much to say on
various matters, especially of a religious nature. It is my intention to
explore a little of his life from what records are available, but mostly to
re-produce some of the writings which were published in his time and are now
hard to find. I believe they are important and should be appreciated by a new
audience who would certainly remain in the dark as to who Reginald Underwood
was and such works would be quite unknown to all except a few who are dedicated
enough to search them out; they may not be to everyone’s taste but it is a
privilege for me to present them here and to help keep the memory of Reginald
Underwood alive.
Reginald Underwood,
author, historian and musician was born at The Ferns,
As a young boy Reginald regularly attended the Methodist Chapel, ‘our chapel’ as he says in his autobiography, ‘Hidden Lights’ (1937) which was the centre of the family’s social life in Finedon – ‘every evening was occupied by a class-meeting, a guild-meeting, a prayer-meeting or choir practice. All very smug and self-centred to those outside, but, as I know, of real importance to those inside.’ (6)
In the census of 1911
taken on Sunday 2nd April the Underwood family are present at
Obelisk Road, Charles who is 45 is working in boot manufacturing, Mary Ann is
43 (and we are told they have been married for 18 years), Mildred is 15 and
working as a ‘sewing machinest’ for a clothing manufacturer while the three
boys, Walter 12, Albert 11 and Dick 5, are of school age; but Reginald is not
there in Finedon. In his autobiography he mentions around 1911 spending time in
In 1925 Reginald met
the author Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) who became a huge influence in his
philosophy of life and in his writing. Underwood’s second novel, Bachelor’s
Hall published by Fortune Press in 1934 had been conceived towards the end of
the twenties and remained in manuscript form as its subject of homosexuality
would have been difficult to publish and to tolerate by the reading public at
the time; one review said that ‘if this book had appeared four or five years
ago, there would probably have been proceedings against the author and
publishers. Underwood has tackled delicate and difficult task courageously and
has accomplished without creating anything nauseating or offensive. While
normal people will find it hard to appreciate the theme of the story,
nevertheless affords an insight and understanding into one of the peculiar
tragedies of life. The characters are strongly drawn, especially Adrian and
Grace and except for one or two highly coloured touches it may be said that the
general treatise reveals that fiction is not stronger than truth.’ (7)
The novel is concerned with the acceptance of the main character, Adrian
Byfield’s sexual orientation and his feelings for Ronald Whitlock; Adrian is
the organist at the church where the previous curate, Charlie Jefferson, shared
similar sexual sensitivities but despite the tender and expert writing the
novel is darkened by the death by suicide of Ronald which unfortunately
mirrored many real cases when such relationships were considered a criminal
offence. The novel echoes Reginald’s first novel, Flame of Freedom which
features a Midland’s man, Julian Ferrer who goes to London and meets Donald
Mackness, an author and the two men live together at Don’s South Kensington
flat; along the way Julian wrestles with feelings for a prostitute named Olive
Denwent and a sailor named Jacob. Another author Underwood became acquainted
with was Herbert Ernest [H. E.] Bates (1905-1974), who was born in Rushden,
Northamptonshire and attended
Underwood’s third
novel is ‘An Old Maid’s Child’ published in 1935 and a short review of it
appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News on Tuesday 16th July that
year (p. 13) which said that ‘there is a touch of A. J. Cronin sternness in
this tale of a battle for a little girl. The old maid of the title is the
child’s aunt. Its mother is a shiftless person who had it before she was
married, and who at that stage was not the least concerned about its fate.
Neither did the aunt then desire it, but compassion and a starved maternal
instinct altered her views, and she adopted the baby without worrying about any
benefice of law. After a year or two the real mother sees the baby again, and,
out of a mixture of pride and pique, asserts her legal right to it. Here the
tale leaps from conflicting desires to drama, and the end comes with the mother
being battered to death in a field by a bull. Strong, pulsating stuff, with
Underwood most impressive in his handling of the old maid’s changes of moods
and emotions.’
Reginald was not
against standing up to what he saw as an injustice or infringement of one’s
liberty; he often fired off letters to the press such as this letter to the
editor on the value of tremolo –
‘Sir, - Your correspondents fail to make the old distinction between use and abuse. Tremolo is of course deliberately taught. It may be produced either by a special method of breathing or by the action of the glottis. And through no other means can such flexibility be attained. All our great singers (and violinista) without exception use it, and with splendid effect.
And again in this short piece under the heading – ‘Corrupting Books’:
‘All sane-minded people resent, ought to resent, being told what or what is not, fit for them to read. As for minds being corrupted by books, that is merely an impudent excuse for fanatical tyranny. Healthy minds cannot be corrupted by books. Unhealthy minds will be corrupted without them.
The earliest reference
I have found to Reginald Underwood in the press is from May 1920 and it is an
article on ‘The Nightingale’s Competitor’ which says that ‘Mr. Reginald
Underwood writes from Finedon, Northants: In these turvy days, when it is the
fashion to challenge superlatives from Shakespeare downwards, it would be
interesting to know if the nightingale still holds its own as the supreme
songster. The writer of those delightful snatches under “A Breath from the
Country” says that he is more often heard than recognised, and that his song is
more marked after dusk because there is then less competition. Doubtless most
birds are more often heard than recognised but as for competition after dusk
the one bird – the storm thrush – which may compare with the nightingale in
brilliance and variety, is often to be heard after sundown. Yet no observant
ear, I think, would mistake the one for the other. I have never counted more
than six or seven distinct phrasings in the thrush’s.’ [Daily News (
Reginald was a concert
pianist and he often gave recitals at local events, such as this appearance at the
Wesleyan Church where he gave an organ recital on Tuesday 13th
February 1923; the Saffron Walden Weekly News [Friday 23rd February
1923. p. 12] states that ‘Mr. R. Underwood FVCAL of Finedon Northants’
performed the recital and it was ‘thoroughly enjoyed, several being encored.
Recitations were rendered… and the choir sang the anthems “When I Survey the
Wondrous Cross” and “The Radiant Morn”.’ And another organ recital at the
Wesleyan Chapel arranged by Mr. J. W. Housden of the Chapel for ‘Tabernacle
Tuesday’ [Tuesday 30th December 1924] in which Reginald Underwood
FVCM [Fellow of the Victoria College of Music (London)], performed with Mrs.
Wolfe of Cottenham who sang the solos “Father of Light”, “Lead Kindly Light”.
Mr. Housden took the chair and ‘thanked Mr. Underwood and Mrs Wolfe on behalf
of the large and appreciative audience for their admirable entertainment.’
[Saffron Walden Weekly News.
REVERIE
If when we wander
through the fields
We find that evening
pasture yields
Cowslip and ladysmock,
Would we not search
all day
To add to our bouquet
Daisy and buttercups?
If none but bright
kingfishers gleam
Among the willows by
the stream
And only thrushes
sing,
How we should ache to
hear
The cuckoo calling
clear
Or see a lark take
wing.
And if the sun blazed
all the day
While every night the
moon held sway
And there was never
rain,
One star would
captivate
A single cloud elate
And storms be praised
again.
SICILIAN SHADOWS
This shadow of a spire
of grass
Trembling along my
naked arm
Is lovelier, as the
clouds that pass
Not in the sky
But in the lake’s
green calm.
Sometimes tired
wantons look
In an old glass
And mirrored see
untroubled eyes;
And for a while forget
the farce
That love spins out of
smiling lies.
It may be that the
hours I nurse
(Borrowed or stolen,
never given)
Are better, or at
least not worse,
Than those that
happier lovers
Think are heaven. (12)
Reginald also gave lessons (beginner and advanced) in piano playing and singing, receiving pupils at his home and visiting them also; in 1939 a typical ad ran:
‘Pianoforte, Singing –
Thorough, modern tuition; moderate fees. Preparation, contests and all grades
examinations. Special courses beginners. Prospectus: Reginald Underwood. The Ferns,
Reginald also seems to
be very successful in giving lessons by post as this advertisement from The
Musical Times & Singing-Class Circular for
In 1939 with war in
‘Sir – with regard to military compulsion. I should like to put one question which I have put many times, but to which no militarist has so far ever given any reasonable, let alone satisfactory, answer. It is this: How do the advocated and imposers of conscription justify their claim to maintain their own liberty and independence while they take away the liberty and independence of one small and comparatively helpless section of the community? Logically, if conscription is fair for one, it is fair for all, including both Prime and Cabinet Ministers. A young man of twenty has as much right to his freedom as any old tyrant – perhaps more, since all his life lies before him. It is no argument to spout about the physical fitness and so forth that may or may not result from his training. That can be had without compulsion if it is desired. It is the moral – or immoral – principle behind the tyranny that matters. And as for the wastrels, that so many are glibly talking about, being brought to boot, well I know no wastrels, but I do know a number of young men in tragically unfortunate circumstances which could be readily altered by better methods than military conscription. Yours, etc…
Another friend of Reginald’s was the novelist Mary Lucy Pendered (1858-1940) whose outspoken views on anti-war and conscription in the press caused a series of angry and critical letters; Reginald wrote to defend her and to condemn one such ‘pseudonymous writer’ who signed himself as ‘Wellingburian’:
‘Sir, - In Monday’s “Evening Telegraph” you say that Miss Pendered has been rebuked. But how can that be a rebuke which is merely the anonymous expression of an opposite opinion? Miss Pendered has as much right to her opinion, and as much right to express her opinion as “Wellingburian”, and whether or not one agrees with her, one can respect her outspokenness. But who can respect the opinions of a Person who must needs hide himself behind an Editor’s Shutters before he shouts his “Yah!”? Yours, etc,.
The arguments in the press continued and Reginald wrote another letter to the Editor a week later:
‘Sir, - Controversy with an anonymous opponent usually seems to me a waste of time, but your correspondent, “Wellingburian” raises point which I think needs airing. I, at any rate, said nothing about his account or bank balance, which was no business of mine. But he infers that both Miss Pendered and I aught to have taken for granted the reason for his anonymity. But how could we? It is quite certain that all anonymous writers do not conceal their identity for the reason that “Wellingburian” gives. With most of them I believe it to be, to say the least, a very dubious method of achieving what they regard as personal safety. Yet I would suggest to “Wellingburian” that the very reason which he gives for his own anonymity, cancels his argument. In other words, here an advocate of the principles of compulsion, tyrannically as same breath that because of this same – tyrannically applied in another direction, he has opinions which he desires to express, but which he dare not express openly, because he fears he would be penalised for doing so! It is queer sort of “free” country when a man is to be browbeaten for speaking his mind. Yet it would appear that such a shameful condition does exist. Voltaire, one of the greatest of controversialists, used to say that he didn’t care how widely an opponent might differ from him, he would go to the stake to defend the right of that opponent to hold and express his own opinions. And even if argument descends into mere abuse, the wisest thing is to ignore it and show by example that one has a greater control of one’s temper. Vituperation gets us nowhere, and as my grandfather used to say: If you are in the right you’ve no need to be angry; if you are in the wrong, you’ve no right to be angry. “Wellingburian”, I think, demonstrates his own unfortunate position that compulsion is a fundamentally bad principle. It is always the over ruling of the weaker by the stronger, and too often for no other purpose than their own selfish ends. Yours, etc,.
Soon after we find an attempt at an apology from ‘Wellingburian’:
‘Sir, - I must apologise to Mr. Underwood for attributing remarks to him that he did not make. It was not with intention, but due to careless wording. He and I seem to be at cross purposes. I am most decidedly not an “advocate” of the principle of compulsion. On the contrary, I loathe and detest it as much as anyone, but (and it is a big “but) in the present special circumstances I do consider it a necessity that all young men, irrespective of class, should receive equal training for the defence of this country. As I see it, this can only be done by conscription. No one deplores the necessity more than I do, but since it is there I am prepared to face facts and admit it. For the rest, far from being “scuppered”. I think I have made my point. I quite agree with Mr. Underwood’s remarks on freedom of speech, and am fully prepared to admit any man’s right to his opinion. What I objected to, and still do, is the humbug of the Labour Party and trade unionists in practising compulsion for sectional interests and opposing it at the present critical time for national interests. I do not think this is unfair criticism since it is a simple fact. – Yours, etc, Wellingburian.’ (16)
Not long after these exchanges in the press Miss Mary L. Pendered, the Northamptonshire authoress, died the following year on Thursday 19th December 1940 at Beechwood, Overstone Park, aged 82, and it was a ‘sad privilege’ for Reginald to write some last words about his old friend who had become an ‘institution rather than a mere individual woman’. Reginald said that she was a pacifist and that ‘temperamentally we were very different, intellectually we were much of a muchness’ and that they had ‘kindred interests… books and music were Miss Pendered’s chief joys’. She went to live in Great Addington and Reginald explained to her the ‘principles of pianoforte techniques’ as expounded by Tobias Matthay; at the age of 77 she had ‘considerable pianistic gifts’. ‘We both had at the same time two books each in the hands of Danish publishers. The translations had been done, and she was most eager to see what these books would look like in Danish. But the unspeakable German invasion intervened’. He goes on to say that she was a socialist and an agnostic with an affinity for Quakers and that ‘philosophically she shared my admiration for Kant’. (17) Miss Pendered was cremated at Kettering and her funeral service, which Reginald attended, was at the old parish church in Great Addington on Monday 23rd December 1940; it was a simple service conducted by the Rev. D. H. Meggy (rector) with no music and a few words of tribute – the rector read the hymn ‘Now the labourer’s task is o’er’.
Reginald’s sister,
Mildred, who married Bertie Brown in 1925 had been having a difficult time of
marriage, in fact, in March 1930 a warrant was issued against Bertie Brown, a
labourer of Finedon, as he did not appear at the summons in a maintenance case;
he was summoned for ‘disobeying a married women’s order, the arrears of costs
being £16’. He was committed to prison for two months which was suspended as
long as the defendant paid ten shillings a week (18). Another summons
occurred several years later in 1939: ‘Finedon Summons withdrawn. At Wellingborough
Petty Sessions today [
Reginald’s cousin,
Florence Ada Jacquest (born 13th November 1886 in Haslingdene,
Lancashire, daughter of John Jacquest born Finedon 1860 and Emily Watson,
(1850-1899) who were married in Northampton in 1883, [Florence died in 1971 in
Wellingborough]) married Ernest Berwick (born 29th March 1894 in
Kettering); Ernest was a correspondent for the Northamptonshire Evening
Telegraph and Wellingborough News and football correspondent for the Daily Echo
who wrote under the columnist name of ‘Mulso’; Florence and Ernest were married
on Sunday 12th February 1928 at the Wesleyan Chapel, Wellingborough;
Ernest died in Wellingborough in 1974. Reginald, who was against military conscription
and wrote letters to the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph in May 1939,
perhaps had some ‘insider’ influence in the form of
Reginald’s illustrated
articles ‘Sketches of Old Finedon’ appeared in the Wellingborough News, the
first appearing on
‘Sir, - in reply to
Celestine C. Kenine’s query about the Humanist ideology, one may say that
Humanism is not a religion. Humanism is a philosophy of Life. It stands, simply
and essentially for the advancement of human welfare in every possible
direction, without any recourse to the supernatural. When she says that the
more she reads The Humanist the more Christian she becomes, is she not
confusing Christianity with good living? But good living was preached and
practiced long before Christianity came into existence and still succeeds
without it. The theoretical monopoly of the good life claimed by so many
Christians is completely unjustified.
Christianity, often so
contradictory in its various manifestations, may entail various ways of pious
living. But that is another matter. First and foremost, Christianity is a
system of supernaturalistic beliefs which Humanism rejects. Without these
beliefs, no amount of human goodness can make one a Christian any more than the
mere acceptance of them can in itself constitute human goodness. – Reginald
Underwood, Finedon, Northants.’
TWO POEMS BY REGINALD UNDERWOOD
The following poems by Reginald Underwood were published in The British Musician and Musical News in 1936 and 1937, the first poem praises the skill and beauty of the English ballet dancer and choreographer, Sydney Francis Chippendall Healey-Kay (1904-1983) who was renamed ‘Anton Dolin’ to give a ‘Russian flavour’ to his name which was in vogue at the time with the popularity of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, a company he joined in 1921:
ANTON DOLIN
(Markova-Dolin Ballet,
1936)
Light as a water-lily
leaf that lies
Upon a shadow-cool,
clear stream,
He glides into the
dance; his eyes
Half shy, half veiled
as in a dream.
Lithe-limbed and slow
His movements go,
Till sudden, a smile
upon his face,
He leaps and drops,
He spins, he stops,
Poised in a pose of
perfect grace.
With delicate art the
difficult breath concealing,
With subtle skill
revealing
The motif hid behind
the music’s pace.
Oh, costly gift and
rare that understands
So well thus finely
how to share
The spell of toes and
eyes and hands.
GENERATIONS
My little son upon my
knee
Confides in God that
he would rather
Be a man; that he
would be
A brave, strong man,
just like his father.
But I, if I could
pray, would plead,
Now that my course has
thus far run,
To be a child, again:
indeed
A little child, just
like my son. (21)
There is an
interesting article in the British Musician and Musical News of 1938 which
promotes Underwood’s autobiography, ‘Hidden Lights’ published in 1937, the
article reads: ‘”Hidden Lights” is the title of an autobiography by Reginald
Underwood, just published by Fortune Press, Buckingham Palace Road (10/6). The
author has recently won a very considerable reputation as a novelist whose
themes are of the “difficult” order. He is a country teacher of music, by that
occupation making his living. And he is known in particular to readers of the
“British Musician” for articles the paper has been very happy to incorporate in
its pages.
The book is written
with absolute ease, as a good talker with a well-stored mind talks to
understanding friends. It is as easy as good journalism, but it is not
journalism, it is literature. There is plenty of philosophy in the book, -
practical philosophy, the fruit of a rather difficult life lived bravely if not
hopefully, and thought about intelligently in retrospect. The philosophy tends
to the pessimistic, yet not in the slightest to the despairing. On the
contrary, it flows eventually into Mr. Underwood’s clever and true modification
of the old saw, - “He who laughs lasts!” Also there is in the book a little of
the contemporary freedom and inelegancy of this generation of ours. Yet this is
quite inoffensive, so natural is it, so opposite, and so intensely and fully
human.
Mr. Underwood began
life in a village, and in a village he has continued to live. He began the
study of music under the local shoemaker, who was one of those monstrosities
who make children learn to play the piano with pennies balanced on the backs of
their hands and with books held under the arm-pits. He eventually pursued his
studies alone, learning by many failures how to succeed; for though with the shoemaker’s
aid he could play “The Maiden’s Prayer” and the Hallelujah Chorus at local
charity concerts, he soon discovered that if you cannot have the best expert
instruction in a subject, it is wiser to tackle it yourself.
In 1911, when 12 years
old, Reginald Underwood spent some time in London at an aunt’s. It is in a
chapter which is a true page of life that he records this experience. His aunt
took him to concerts and plays, so that in these impressionable moments he came
into contact with the work of many of the great people who survived from the 19th
century, - among them the incomparable Pachmman, whose playing of Chopin, it
may be, planted the seeds of a Chopin understanding in Mr. Underwood which has
resulted in that composer being his most contenting of all creative musicians.
He encountered Sir
George Martin, organist of St Paul’s, - he was sitting in the church, saw Sir
George coming down the aisle, looked at him with an earnestness that aroused
the old man’s attention, so that he spoke to him, and after a few minutes’ talk
actually took him up to the organ and allowed him to play on it – “So that you
can tell people you have played on the organ in St Paul’s.” The book has many
human touches like this.
Another chapter deals
with pupils, and this again is as a true page from life. The young teacher’s
first batch of pupils included a girl who was stupid to idiocy. (Among his
later pupils was an unpleasant middle-aged lady who wore a necklace of the gall
stones that had been taken from her body years before.) The poor stupid girl
proved to be properly musical by nature: “she had a remarkable sense of time
and rhythm, and even mastered a fair degree of technique. She would sway, and
sometimes sing in the most appalling voice, as she played her pieces through
with quite powerful emotional expression. To watch her and listen to her was
sometimes an awesome experience. Who could say what strange passions and
desires, what cravings and disappointments, hopes or fears, moved in the
obscure recesses of that benighted mind. To find, perhaps, no other solace, no
other outlet than that of the language which tells no lies and outsoars in
capacity of expression all other mediums.”
There is only room
here for another item of the many which make up this delightful book. Let it be
a reference to the servant Martha, - an evangelical “enthusiast”, who used to
sing the most concrete of hymns, yet with (as the grown-up Reginald Underwood
now suspects) some underlying sense of humour: such hymns as, - “Come needy,
come guilty, / come loathsome and bare, / you can’t be too filthy, / come just
as you are!” Which reminds us of how a poor street-singer used to sing that
prime Moody and Sankey effusion, “dare to be a Daniel”: which was thus, - Dirty
be a Daniel, / dirty stand alone, / dirty have a purpose firm, / and dirty make
it known.
We hope that many
readers of the “British Musician” will acquire this book, either for themselves
or from the libraries. For they will meet in the author an one who will,
without preaching, help them further to understand life and art. And they will
also meet one who has the profoundest reverence for Tobias Matthay, regarding
him as the greatest piano-forte teacher of our time. (22)
In 1955 Reginald wrote a letter to the editor of the Literary Guide under the heading ‘The Quest for Belief’ which tells us a little of Reginald’s religious attitude:
‘Sir, - Lt-Col F. H. Thompson makes statements that are more sentimental than accurate. How can he possibly know that for the majority of agnostics agnosticism is not enough? I don’t believe it. Forty years of agnosticism and association with agnostics impels me to an opposite conclusion. Neither can I believe that agnostics lack experience of inspiration and sacrifice. I know of more than one who could give a very different account so with regard to the alleged necessity of agnostics for a little bit of heroism and aggression – aggressiveness is doubtless meant. We may waive the heroism but, good gracious, has Lt-Col Thompson never heard of Voltaire, Bradlaugh, Shaw, Wells, and even our own Margaret Knight? Lt-Col Thompson sweepingly generalizes with demonstrable un-truth that the agnostic is luke-warm and indifferent. To what? And he puts this apathy down to Nature’s dislike of a vacuum. But that is too deep for the likes of me. As for the courage to try Christianity, well, which particular brand out of a large assortment does the Colonel recommend to try, he says, aright? So far I have found it impossible to get anything approaching a clear definition of Christianity, let alone any guarantee of aright-ness in practice. I was brought up in a strongly religious atmosphere and for the first twenty years of my life took myself for granted as an impeccable Christian. The end of the First World War left me profoundly disillusioned. Incidentally it was an old paper-backed copy I came across at the time and still possess, of Mill’s Three Essays on Religion – the book Margaret Knight writes about in your July issue – which made me indeed think again to some purpose. I was compelled in all honesty to reject Christianity, and so far from any regret in doing so it has been a treat ever since to be free from the miasma of such a welter of contradiction and, so to speak family hatreds.
Has Lt-Col Thompson
yet found the courage to try agnosticism – aright?
Reginald was also a great enthusiast of local history and he is inextricably linked to Finedon through his interest and the publication of his volume, ‘The Pageant of Finedon’. Another young man who had the same passion for Finedon was John Leonard Hawthorne Bailey (1942-1016) who met Underwood when he began photographically documenting the historic buildings which were being lost in the village in the early nineteen-sixties. Bailey is to be much admired for his preservation of old Finedon and like the loss of those fine old architectural wonders which could not be saved the loss of John Bailey MBE is felt by many who remember him and owe him a great debt. He is the author of several books on Finedon: ‘Finedon otherwise Thingdon’ (1975), ‘Finedon Revealed’ (1986), ‘Look at Finedon’ (2004) and ‘Finedon’s Yards’ (2005) which is truly an impressive legacy.
Reginald Underwood
died aged 70 in Finedon, Northamptonshire on
Following Reginald’s
death, The Freethinker, a periodical Underwood wrote articles for, printed the
following announcement: ‘Reginald Underwood. Once again, this week, our View
and Opinions, is written by Reginald Underwood. It will, alas be his last.
Indeed it was almost certainly the last article that he wrote. It was posted to
me on November 7th and Reg died suddenly exactly a week later at the
age of 70. His contributions to this paper will I know be sadly missed. His
freethinking friends have lost a kindly, generous and undoubtedly brilliant
colleague – and a genuinely modest one. It was characteristic of him to
accompany each of his articles with a note that if I didn’t like what he had
written I could always tear it up. I hardly need say that I never did. He was a
clear thinker and a fine writer. He had a splendid and often scintillating
command of English. When he taught the language in a grammar school it was, he
laughingly told me, more than a trial: it was a torture. “Most boys don’t care
two hoots about grammar,” he said, “and their logic against it is sometimes
unassailable.”
He also taught the
boys music, having himself been a concert pianist, well known on the Continent,
before the last war. In this country he was better known as a writer, with his
novels Bachelor’s Hall, Flame of Freedom and An Old Maid’s Lights’ [sic]. And
in a real sense his life came full circle. “I still sleep in the room I was
born in – and hope I shall die in it,” he said to me a little while ago. And
his wish was fulfilled. The truth is that, despite his modern intellectual
outlook, Reg disliked the present-day world and looked with nostalgia at the
past. On a recent visit to London St.
Paul three score years and ten, delighting us with
his writing up to the very end. Colin McCall.’ (25)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Flame of Freedom. Novel.
Cr. 8vo.
Bachelor’s Hall. Novel.
Cr. 8vo.
An Old Maid’s Child. Novel.
Cr. 8vo.
Hidden Lights
(autobiographical reminiscences). Cr. 8vo.
The House of Pleasant
Bread. Novel. Cr. 8vo.
The Pageant of Finedon
(historical). Cr. 8vo.
Secret Fear. Novel.
Cr. 8vo.
This Sorry Scheme. Novel.
Cr. 8vo.
[The d’Arch Smith
numbers are those allocated by Timothy d’Arch Smith in his ‘R. A. Caton and the
Fortune Press. A Memoir and a Hand-list’.
ARTICLES IN MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS
I feel it is worthy to
reproduce some of the articles Reginald Underwood submitted to magazines and
periodicals for publication. Reginald saw many of his writings published in the
British Musician and Musical News and the following piece, ‘The Lure of the
Ballet’, published in 1936, is a good example of Underwood’s forward thinking
attitude to the ballet and the role of male and female dancers calling for an
acceptance of different forms of sexuality within ballet and the arts in
general which is certainly ahead of its time.
THE LURE OF THE BALLET
It is quite probable
that many people reading the title of this article would be inclined forthwith
to put a sardonic question mark behind it. For while, on the one hand, ballet
seems to gain a growing list of devotees who regard it with an inviolable adoration,
on the other, it still meets with lofty indifference or even contemptuous
execration.
One not infrequently
meets with critics – perhaps detractors would be more correct – who, in
responsible columns, still express their inability to see anything in ballet
beyond an inane capering about and a dubious display of physical charms. The
devotees lavish praise with a holy and uncritical fervour. When they visit the
ballet they apparently prefer to leave their critical faculties at home and
bitterly resent anything in the nature of criticism, however reasonable, from
others. They forget, or seemingly ignore, that only by such criticism can
ballet or any other art hope to become effectual and grow. These balletomaniacs
like all other sorts of maniacs are of little use in enlisting sympathetic
appreciation of the art they so ardently worship, since nothing more vigorously
encourages prejudice in an opponent than too vehement enthusiasm. The
detractors are just as fatuous on their side. They defeat themselves by their
own violence. When they go to the ballet they take all their critical faculties
(such as they are) with them – and nothing else. Whether or not they come to
pray they certainly remain to scoff. They need to be reminded of the old woman
who, when her friends remonstrated with her for kissing her cow, replied, “it’s
a matter of taste my dears.” They forget that although to them, the ballet may
seem no more than a childish romp unfit for the entertainment and edification
of he-men and she-women, and suited only for the amusement of a lot of feeble
minded old women, that these same old women still have a perfect right to kiss
their cow, and that when their preference comes to be defended upon
intellectual grounds, they can soon find ample justification for it.
Another point these
detractors forget is, that if they despise the ballet so much, they can at
least always stay away from it!
A serious but sane
admiration of ballet will not take much notice of such extremists; a serious
but sane dislike of ballet will equally avoid them. Reasonable opponents can
respect, even if they cannot understand each other’s point of view, because
they know that their preferences and objections really are at bottom no more
than a matter of taste. They know too that taste is quite an arbitrary matter
and cannot be subjected to any opinionativeness.
The very fact that
ballet has been able to provoke such intense diversity of opinion is a sign of
its vitality. A feeble or moribund art can arouse neither love nor hate. No
longer is ballet the mere handmaiden of opera, a frivolous stopgap. It stands
with dignity upon its own two legs. It is now a serious competitor with opera
and not a humble ally. In spite of its enemies it has proved that it can by
itself undertake a successful season in that supreme English citadel of opera, Covent Garden . True, it was a Ballet Russe that had done
so. But when we consider the accomplishment of the static Vic-Wells Ballet, or
the mobile Markova-Dolin company, it looks as if even British ballet promises
in due course, achievements quite equal to those of its foreign contemporaries.
The choreography of Frederick Ashton or the superb dancing of Anton Dolin need
fear no comparison with their counterparts in other countries.
The lure of ballet is
indeed no myth. For such developments could not have come about without the
support of a genuinely discerning enthusiasm. In his Dance of Life, Havelock
Ellis makes out an excellent case for the dance as the most fundamental form of
human expression. The child and the savage dance even before they sing. Ballet
at the other end of the scale, is the present supreme exposition of dancing, as
far removed from those primitive childish and native attempts at rhythmical
movements as God Save the King with one finger on the piano is from a fine
performance of one of the “48”. And it may well be that as ballet attains
nearer and nearer to perfection, both in conception and execution, and as its
meaning becomes at once more profound and more clear, it will rank at its best
with the most spiritualistic expositions of any form of art. It shows of course
like music or literature various types of manifestations and varying degrees of
artistic excellence. There is as much difference between the voluptuous
delights of a Rimsky Korsakov composition and the austerity of a Bach fugue.
The one depends on colour and story. The other is an expression of almost pure
pattern and rhythm, and as such will blend, for those who can assimilate it
(and in spite of the violent denunciations of the philistines), into an amazing
harmony with the Brahms No. 4 symphony. The philistine’s objections seem always
to me a revelation of incapacity on their part. Because their narrower range
prevents them from enjoying what they denounce, they cannot believe or admit
that anybody else can enjoy it. Personally, I find that the only difficulty in
this combination of fine dancing with fine music, is, that it takes too heavy a
toll almost of my appreciative faculties. So much beauty presented at once to
the ear and the eye, is almost more than I can take in. There are those who
admit that though ballet has indeed a lure, it is a lure rather for women than
men. Possibly. It is understandable that women may be more attracted by male
dancing than men. At the same time they may be equally attracted to female
dancing for different reasons. Here, they can see themselves in the same roles,
wearing fascinating dresses and evoking similar applause as they display their
graces. On the other hand, while men may have a masculine enjoyment in the
female dancer, they are assumed to regard – Britons at any rate that dancing is
effeminate and not a man’s job, that man is more in place, say, on the football
field or in the boxing ring. And by this, is implied obliquely, that football
or boxing are of a superior order to ballet. But are they? Afterall, although
there may be a great deal of art for instance in playing football, football is
only a game. It has beauty of movement but it appeals primarily to animal
rather than aesthetic instincts. It is a combat. Its chief purpose is that one
side should overcome the other. It is therefore more primitive than civilised.
To refer to it as in any sense spiritualised, however vague that term may be,
would be to invite deserved ridicule. As for referring to boxing in such terms,
it would be like pronouncing the benediction at the close of a prize fight. But
ballet, if it means anything at all, surely exists for the culture and
expression of beauty. It is the emotion of motion. If as certain hostile
critics sneer, it provides a means of lascivious enjoyment – a possibility I
should imagine to be remote in first-class ballet, - I can only retort that
nastiness like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As for the epithet
effeminate applied to male ballet dancers, it seems to me both foolish and
futile. Even so balanced and penetrating a critic as Arnold L. Haskell says
that “the majority of male dancers, are effeminate because the majority are
frankly bad.” This sounds at first a little like putting the cart before the
horse, but whether or not, I don’t see why what is called effeminacy should be
considered, synonymous with bad. Effeminacy is at best a vague term and as Mr.
Haskell conceives it seems to be any sort of departure of the male dancer from
an attitude of virile gallantry towards the female dancer. But surely the
function of a dancer of whichever sex is to dance, and the suggested
restriction would seem to imply a rather absurd attempt to confine the
expressiveness of the ballet within conventional sexual limitations, like the
old-fashioned novel, in which all the hes were hes and all the shes shes in
emphatic capitals. But if balletic representations are to grow with the same
comprehensiveness as music or drama, no such limit must be imposed. Human
nature is an endless graduation of psychological types, not a water-tight
division of definite male and female. And every type has a claim. It is said,
with ample evidence I believe, that not only are the more intermediate types
more drawn into the ballet itself, but that they form its strongest support as
spectators. Any importation of mere male or female prejudices will do more harm
than good. It is by no means impossible to conceive of first-class ballet being
composed entirely of male dancers as well as entirely of female dancers as in
the old days. It is always stupid convention and never reason that refuses to
call a man beautiful as well as a woman, whether it be physically or
expressively. To lay a charge of effeminacy and then to say that because of it
a dancer is a bad dancer is no more than an outburst of personal distaste. It
is the detached quality of the motion, the gesture, that matters. The dance –
its rhythm, pattern, emotion – and not sex makes the ballet. If ballet exists
as I hold for the manifestation of a particular form of beauty, then all true
beauty lovers will feel to some extent its lure, whether it be through an
enjoyment of that deliciously fantastic wonderland to which mimes and
marionettes also belong, or whether it be through the perception of those
profound human instincts for rhythm and pattern so exquisitively expressed by
the trained graces of the perfect dancer. (26)
The next article I am reproducing is from the same periodical, British Musician and Musical News and it concerns that old controversial subject among musicologists, scholars and critics, the vocal tremolo. In the article he mentions the wonderfully named Mr. Fox Strangways (Arthur Henry Fox Strangways 1859-1948) and his critical opinion of the ‘wobble’, and a friend of Reginald Underwood’s, the Scottish singer, Madame Jessie Strathearn (1871-1845):
WOBBLE WOBBLE
In a recent number of
the Sunday Observer, Mr. Fox Strangways had some caustic things to say about
what he calls, the wobble in singing. This peculiar phenomenon has been much
discussed and condemned of late and while the inference is, that it is an
enormity which the majority of singers are guilty of perpetrating, not one of
them has apparently come forward in its defence. Mr. Fox Strangways suggests
that there are singers – both teachers and performers – who actually approve of
and deliberately cultivate this wobble. He says that in his opinion all such
are beyond argument. But surely nothing that is merely a matter of opinion is
beyond argument. He considers that once perhaps, in a song, this wobble may be
indulged in to express emotion, but no more than once apparently no matter how
much emotion the song may seem in need of expressing. He obviously wants all
notes of any duration to be drawn out firm and straight as a ruler – like the
lines of very modern architecture. No curves or waves in them anywhere. Yet
there are those who contend, and not altogether without reason, that such
firmness and straightness can result in a good deal of hardness and an
unpleasant quality of strained tone. Whereas a slight loosening, a sort of not
too-pronounced pulsing has a distinctly mellowing effect quite apart from the
specific expression of emotion. He says that Jenny Lind never used the wobble.
I cannot say. She was too long before my time. But I know that all the great
singers that I ever heard, Calve, Melba, Tetrazinni, Clara Butt, Caruso and the
rest, without exception made constant, and to my ear very beautiful use of this
loosening in their tone production. “Wobble” would be too strong a description
I think, but their notes were by no means always firm and straight.
The question is, what
exactly does Mr. Fox Strangways, as for that matter all its other denouncers,
mean by this wobble? Has he in mind a special kind, or a special degree, since
surely there are varieties of both. He would no doubt agree that the wobble is
much more pronounced in some singers than others. And he will not be unaware
that certain teachers who countenance and even cultivate it, try to dignify it
with more high-sounding names such as tremolo or vibrato. Not but what a bad
wobble by any other name would sound as offensive. But, so it seems to me, it
is with the wobble as with most things, it becomes revolting only when it is
overdone. And eminence is no guarantee against that. The singing for instance
of Elena Gerhardt, otherwise that of a fine artist, is rather spoilt for me by
exaggeration in this direction. In all such singing, this exaggeration suggests
and probably is actually the result of, a helpless lack of control in some part
of the breathing apparatus. And therein I think, lies a most important point.
There is all the difference in the world between a wobble, or as I prefer to
call it, a wave, consciously controlled and one that is merely the outcome of
weakness, even though the particular specimen may sound overdone. The singer
who can sustain a note with a perfectly steady vibration or wave it at will, is
in a very different position artistically from one who wobbles because he can’t
help it. And it is fairly safe to say that a controlled deliberateness of this
action will rarely if ever be excessive, so long as it is coupled with any
artistic perception whatever.
The term “wobble” I
consider to be appropriate only to those voices which are so insecure in pitch
that it would be difficult to tell from them precisely what note they are
supposed to be sounding. Not so long since, I heard a soprano of considerable
renown who when she was singing, shall we say high G, produced a tremolo that
seemed like a rapid alternation of the G with E below it. Indeed, it struck me
that as a special effect purposely aimed at, it might have been regarded as
very clever. But almost every other note was similarly distorted and it was
painfully plain that the distortion was quite involuntary. Such an example is
far from unique and one can very heartily sympathise with Mr. Fox Strangways
abhorrence of it. He puts the blame for tolerating it upon the hypocrisy of
audiences who will applaud what they do not like. There may be something in
that, but when this lady had finished her song, a gentleman in the next seat, a
perfect stranger, turned to me with the dry comment, “Poor thing!” The applause
was neither loud nor prolonged. It was merely and maybe falsely courteous. It
was just as if the audience echoed my neighbour’s comment, but added “More to
be pities than blamed.” Which perhaps was quite true. On the other hand, a
slight waving of the voice on sustained notes, in my opinion very considerably
enhances its beauty. The effect I have in mind is a sort of series of small
crescendos and diminuendos alternating at the rate of four or five to a second,
and produced by a controlled action of the glottis, and used of course with due
artistic discretion. The fact that players of stringed instruments invariably
aim at a similar effect indicates how wide-spread is the inclination for it.
One wonders if Mr. Fox Strangways would have all the notes of a violin sound as
taut as those of a flute. No doubt there are poor performers on the fiddle who
overdo this sort of thing as abominably as poor singers. And it may even be
weakness – the weakness of an ingrained bad habit – in their case too. But,
then, they are hardly a criterion of judgement.
One of the interesting
facts that arises from these discussions on wobbling is the different ways in
which, in the human voice it seems to be produced. For instance the larynx
varies in formation in different individuals, so that the speed of the pulsing
or waving can vary from the slow quavering of a voice worn with age to the
rapid, almost staccato succession of sounds which results in a sort of lamb’s
bleating. Moreover, all this wobbling is not necessarily produced in the
glottis. I have known cases, both voluntary and involuntary where it arises
from a vibration of the diaphragm. The result is generally an emulation of the
cinema organ, surely the most atrocious kind of wobble in existence. The late
Madame Jessie Strathearn, an old friend of mine and a well-known singer, once
told me that when she was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, she knew an
eccentric professor (I wonder if anybody else recalls him) who not only admired
and approved of the wobble (though he wouldn’t have called it that!) but
boasted that he knew of four distinct methods of producing it, and one method
was by vibrating the walls of the abdomen. It was said that a quite famous bass
singer, who for the life of him couldn’t produce the wobble in his throat, used
this weird method on occasion with fine effect! I have always thought that a
singer possessing really expert anatomical knowledge of, all the physical
organs involved in singing, could write a fascinating exposition of the ways
and means by which this wobble could be caused – and cured. Text-books are
hopelessly vague on the subject even if they mention it at all. As for those
critics who will have none of it at any price, who declare that it is offensive
in every kind and degree, well, they are, shall we say, beyond argument. (27)
The next article from
The Freethinker of 1964 reveals something of Reginald’s friendship with the
author, Richard Rumbold who was born in 1913 and went up to Christ Church,
college, Oxford. Richard lived under the brutal tyranny of his father and like
his mother, Anne and sister Rosemary who both committed suicide in 1928 and
1957 respectively, possibly followed in their footsteps when he fell from a
window to his death on
THE POINT OF NO REWARD
To the recently
published diary of the late Richard Rumbold (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 36s.),
William Plomer, its most efficient editor, has given the title A Message in
Code. This does not, as it might at first seem to suggest, refer to any
explicit message which the book is supposed convey. It is taken from a comment
made by the author towards the end of his diary: “Life, I am almost inclined to
think, has the fantastic quality of a message in code, to which we do not
possess the key.” There might be differing views on whether or not life is, or
has, a message over and above its meaning as we understand it in the experience
of daily living. Bit if there is any mysterious other-reality behind
appearance, if there is any message in code that requires deciphering, it is
pretty safe to say that nobody has as yet found the key to it. Nobody has ever
got nearer than unproved assumption, not even the infallible Pope, as Richard
was destined to discover.
It might be said that
the diary itself has a message, or maybe several messages, none of which is so
cryptic as to call for much skill in deciphering. To a Freethinker at any rate,
it provides plain enough confirmation of the futility of religion in general
and of the Christian religion in particular when dealing with the intractable
problems which life imposes. Richard Rumbold was brought up in what to a
Freethinker is the sinister light of the beliefs and dogmas of that unchristian
brand of Christianity called Roman Catholicism. At a fairly early age he seems,
both for temperamental and practical reasons, to have come to distrust and then
to detest the Catholic Church. He eventually turned upon it and although in
later years he seems under pressure to have resumed some sort of sketchy
dalliance with it, he appears, rather like Talleyrand, to have nodded both but
not to have spoken. He never, either in practice or in spirit, actually
returned to it. In later years he travelled far and wide, both physically and
mentally. He sought the elusive key through Buddhism, both the Ceylonese and
Japanese Zen varieties, but although he seems to have derived more satisfaction
from them than from Christianity, they did not lead to any lasting success.
Richard’s first real clash with the Roman Catholic Church apparently arose out
of the publication of a first novel, suggestively called Little Victims. He
wrote this at the time he was an Oxford Oxford
Although the actual
characters in the book were carefully labelled fictitious, Richard had been
indiscreet enough to make an elderly and seamy-minded French tutor ask the
leading character (obviously Richard in disguise), “So you’re a Catholic, are
you? Have you met Father Ronald Knox yet – such a nice man?” In such a context
that could easily have been a double-edged remark and Father Knox with typical
priestly forbearance at once took umbrage. He lost no time in finding an excuse
for a humiliating revenge. He excluded Richard from Communion in the most
inexcusably pointed way. “I knelt at the Holy Communion rail with the others,”
said Richard, “but when Father Knox reached me he took the silver plate from my
hands and passed on to the next person,” unmistakably implying that Richard was
unfit to receive the consecrated wafer. News of this incident promptly got into
the papers and there was a blaze of undesirable publicity, into which the
Archbishop of Birmingham was also drawn. When Richard presently sought out
Father Knox for an explanation, the priest told him, “I hear you have written a
very filthy book,” and so forth. The priest admitted that he had not read the
book but had received information from another undergraduate. But Catholic
restrictions, as Richard said at the time, are appalling. “I have written a
very moral book,” he protested, “but my Archbishop, like most of the Catholic
hierarchy, has no discrimination. People seem to think that Catholic schools
are immune from vice and different from Protestant schools. This is untrue.
They are worse.” Richard could speak from personal experience. But as usual the
Catholic authorities resented the truth. Only a Catholic version of truth must
ever be permitted.
My own acquaintance
with Richard Rumbold began shortly after the publication of Little Victims. A
novel of mine had just come out and I had dedicated it to Edward Carpenter,
whom in my young days I used to visit. Richard, much younger than I, had a warm
admiration for Carpenter’s ideas and on this account wrote to me through the
publishers. Shortly after we met and forthwith became firm if not close
friends. Our further meetings and correspondence were always spasmodic as he
was continually changing his address. He had what is so curiously called an
independent income nothing could be more dependant and was able to spend and
roam in a way I could not. It was not until the early part of 1949 that I
received through the post the copy of a book entitled My Father’s Son,
obviously an autobiography. It was by Richard Lumford, a name unknown to me.
However, an accompanying letter soon explained. Here, of all things, was
Richard Rumbold’s autobiography under a protective pseudonym. The first part of
this very welcome gift turned out to be a more or less factual account of what
had been told as fiction in the novel. It carried on the life story much
further. Some of it I already knew at first hand. This book proved to be a
great advance on the novel, far more mature and this time extremely well
written.
The rumpus with the
domineering Catholics is described in this autobiography and retold in the
diary, which in the earlier parts inevitably overlaps the autobiography. In
fact all three books, novel, autobiography and diary are to a considerable
extent varying versions of the same life story and the different modes of
telling provide a remarkable illustration of how a mind can develop. From first
to last that story evinces a strong, natural and intelligent antipathy towards
organised religion, especially Romanism with its dogmatic teaching based on an
authority that is entirely self-constituted. “Even before I was
excommunicated,” Richard remarks in the autobiography, “I was not a convinced
Catholic.” And the same candour threads all through the diary, which has become
more intimately revealing, more deeply reflective. But apart from this
all-pervasive hostility to western religious pretensions, this diary gives an
absorbing insight into the workings of a strange and remarkable mind,
irremediably warped by a bad heredity and darkly overshadowed by the ravages of
tuberculosis. The tragic circumstances of his family life are graphically
portrayed. His mother, dominated and goaded by an atrocious husband she was
unable to divorce because of Catholic forbiddance, eventually went out of her
mind and committed suicide. Richard’s only sister, also a Catholic, committed
suicide for reasons which seem never to have been cleared up. Nevertheless,
although an aura of tragedy permeates the book, it has its lighter aspects.
There are extremely interesting accounts of Richard’s associations with the great
and famous and of their religious and literary opinions. Then, the latter part
of the diary can be read as a fascinating travel book with vivid descriptions
of life in Ceylon India Japan Europe
and soon to a resumption of the earlier difficulties. He once went with me to a
Quaker meeting, an hour’s silence broken only by a few quietly-spoken
sentences. This, he thought as we walked away, seemed to come nearer to the
real thing than any previous experience. He refers to Humanism in his diary as
inadequate because “When a man is ill or dying in terror of the unknown, no
humanism will avail him.” One could only point out that for the convinced
Humanist, such terror was the outcome of false beliefs and disappears as the
falsity becomes exposed. Richard Rumbold’s untimely end at the age of
forty-seven would no doubt in the view of commonplace Christianity, be looked
upon as a tragedy to deplore. Yet it was manifestly the end of a life
perpetually and inescapably tormented by periods of intense and un-deserved
unhappiness. Whether he died by accident or whether he followed the examples of
mother and sister remains uncertain. But either way a saner and more humanistic
opinion could regard his death as being in that homeliest pf phrases, a happy
release. Indeed if it were actually premeditated, it could be seen as a bravely
wise decision. Death is preferable to a living death. If one could think that
there were another personal existence beyond our human apprehension, then we
might imagine that Richard has at last found the key and decoded the message.
But no convincing reason has ever been shown to suppose anything of the sort. (28)
Reginald again took up the cudgels to defend what he saw as an absurd point of difference between the words ‘readable’ and ‘audible’ as described by Neville D’Esterre, a somewhat pompously self-inflated music critic of the thirties whose real name was Peter Hugh Reed (1892-1969), in an article in the British Musician and Musical News which is best left to the angry pen of Underwood to explain:
A CRITICISM OF THE
CRITIC
Mr. Neville D’Esterre
is so cross with both reviewers and novelists that it is with some diffidence I
take up what seems to be a sort of challenge in the last sentence of his
article on “Readable Books and Audible Music” in the December number of the
British Musician. Yet, what does his scolding amount to? He says that a
combination of musical critic and novel reviewer is absurd; that to suppose a
man capable of doing both things effectively is like expecting him to be
capable of deepest philosophy at the same time as he designs fashionable
women’s hats. Apparently all musical criticism is equivalent to the deepest
philosophy and all reviewing to designing hats.
He then goes on to say
that any competent musical critic could well and easily review a novel; could
do it on his head in fact. Clever man! But what is this but putting the other
way about the very combination that Mr. d’Esterre has just dismissed as absurd?
And also, is one to
presume that although the deepest philosophy is quite beyond the designer of
hats, the designing of hats would be child’s play to the philosopher. I know
nothing of the designing of hats, but I wonder!
After giving the poor
reviewers another rap or two on the nose by referring to their ‘idiot-like
ability’ to read much in a short time and to their type of mind which “disports
itself” for reviewing, Mr. d’Esterre has a go at the novelists themselves.
He declares he speaks
with feeling, which seems obvious; and humility, which, considering he is
assuming the role of musical critic speaking ex cathedra, is not quite so
obvious. He practically tells the novelists that they are as bad as the
reviewers and says to their faces (the rude man!) that they are in fact a lazy
lot with minds so superficial that they write novels merely to get out of hard
study and serious meditation.
Well, well, well! I
have written a novel or two myself. I know many others who have. And I don’t
believe one of us has ever realised that novel writing was just as easy as all
that. Is not Mr. d’Esterre’s heavily solemn view of the novel as permanent
literature (I wonder where he draws the dividing line) rather misplaced? All
that many novels ever aspire to or claim to do is to provide mental relaxation
and entertainment for those who feel they need it or desire it. Obviously we
can’t all be philosophers or musical critics and those who find novels such a
vast ocean of boredom as Mr. d’Esterre says, are under no obligation even to
look at them. But I do think they are under an obligation to let other people
read in peace if they wish.
Novel readers are not
necessarily in search of intellectual exposition nor yet a mirror of life – as
Mr. d’Esterre sees it. Why should they be when they have only to turn to the
philosophers and the musical critics for such high-souled pabulum?
Returning to the
reviewers, Mr. d’Esterre says that if he were caught advising the guileless
public (is the public really so guileless?) that a novel was readable he would
shrink, etc., etc. And he then goes on to make a confused comparison between
readable books and audible music. Confused, because not only does he, and with
seeming deliberateness, mistake the meaning of “readable” analogous to
“audible”.
For a reviewer to
commit a similar “lunacy” to the supposition of a musical critic beginning:
“This composition is quite audible”, he would have to say: “This book is quite
visible”.
All the words
“readable” can mean to anyone who is not wilfully perverse is, that although a
book may not attain to any great height of artistic excellence, it still has,
in the reviewer’s opinion, this quality or that which makes it at least worth
looking through.
As for anyone finding
“ordinary words arranged in grammatical order unreadable” of course they can. I
have known any amount that I couldn’t read though I could see plainly enough
that they were there. “Unreadable books and inaudible music” is a false analogy
and leads the whole argument astray. I see no absurdity in talking of
unreadable books. And a true musical counter-part would be, not inaudible
music, which is merely impossible, but, so to speak, un-hearable music; that is
music which may not be worth listening to, though it must of necessity be
audible as the printed word must be visible. As for fiction giving less than
half the truth, well, Mr. d’Esterre, what is truth? And if worshippers grow in
time to resemble the gods they worship, why not? (29)
A month later, in
February 1937, Neville d’Esterre responded with a letter to the editor of the
British Musician and Musical News (volume 14, number 133, p. 27), with more
than a touch of venom, saying, ‘a writer should never reply to criticism; he
should just go on with his job. However, there is a brief word that may be said
about Mr. Underwood’s strictures, without much harm to anybody. The analogy
between readable books and audible music is not a false one, since it is in the
nature of music that the sense of it is given forth with the notes as they are
uttered. Music, in other words, is not mere noise without meaning, but a noise
essentially eloquent. The two propositions, therefore, are closely analogous.
The merely visible properties in a book are its size and shape, the colour of
its bindings, the quality of its print, and so forth; and so there is no
analogy between what meets the eye in a book and what hits the ear in a musical
composition. “This book is visible” must be balanced by “This music is also
visible” – the notation, the title of the work, the name of the composer and
publisher. One hears music as one reads words; but, inasmuch as wisdom enjoins
that we always take the perfectly obvious for granted, it is quite as
superfluous, and therefore absurd, to describe any book as readable, as to
describe any composition as audible.
For the rest, Mr.
Underwood’s reactions to modern “fiction” in general seem to differ radically
from mine. Well, I have always suspected that there was somebody about who
liked that sort of thing. The fortunes made by publishers and literary agents
had to be accounted for somehow. – London January 10th
1937 . Very sincerely yours, Neville d’Esterre.’
The editor of the
British Musician and Musical News felt the need to write an explanation on the
history of the word ‘readable’ meaning ‘legible’ and saying that the ‘word in
dispute between Mr. d’Esterre and Mr. Underwood has even been used as a noun:
“The book is definitely one of the read-ables of the year.” But it has never
risen above the level of colloquial speech or journalism.’ The word ‘hearable’
(audible) gets the same treatment bringing Southey and Huxley into the argument
which no doubt deflated through lack of further wind.
Once again Underwood tackles religious matters in this next article which appeared in The Humanist of March 1963:
THE NATURE OF BELIEF
Belief accepted on
faith because there is no evidence of make-believe.
Belief can have
reference to many subjects just as one subject can have reference to many
beliefs. The outstanding subject in this respect is, of course, that muddled
conglomeration of beliefs we know as religion. In the western world ‘belief’ in
its wider sense is now used almost exclusively in association with religion,
and when we speak of belief or unbelief we nearly always mean the acceptance or
rejection of Christianity. It is not so many years since that Church of England
schoolchildren were taught not to recite the Creed but to ‘say the belief.’ The
Belief was for long and probably still may be the more popular name for that
kernel of Christianity the Apostle’s Creed.
Believing is Knowing
It can hardly be said
that the term ‘belief’ in this connection is a particularly happy choice. Doubt
is implicit in the very word. For belief is a very different thing from
knowledge. It is different from matter of opinion. Whether a belief is clear as
spring water, as few beliefs are, or whether it is as clear as mud, as most
beliefs are, belief, no matter how fervently it may be held, can never be more
than the expression of unproved and unprovable conviction. Whereas definitive
knowledge, in so far as within our human limits we can be said to possess it,
consists of proven truth. It remains unaffected by fervour and it cannot be
refuted.
There are still people
who persist in asking the stupid question: Do you mean to say, then, that we
cannot believe anything that we cannot prove? Of course we can. It is just the
things we cannot prove that we can believe. It is the thing we can prove that
we cannot believe, for proof gives knowledge and knowledge annuls and
supersedes belief.
When we say that two
and two make four we are not saying something we believe to be true, we are
saying something that we know to be true. The statement is not merely
self-evident, it is mathematically demonstrable. On the other hand, such
numerical juggling as ‘three in one and one in three’ is certainly not
self-evident and is a purely theological device. There may be those who believe
in it as in some esoteric formula of truth, but nobody has ever been able to
demonstrate it as such.
There are innumerable
past events which we know to be historical facts. To say that we believe them
is beside the point. Anyone who professes not to believe then will be regarded
not as an unbeliever but as a fool. But that somebody named Jesus was, two
thousand years ago, born of a virgin and then later came back to life three
days after he had been murdered is certainly not historical fact. If it were,
we should all have no option but to acknowledge it. Yet many people, some of
the declared Christians, are unable to acknowledge it. They regard it as no
more than historical fiction. They find it literally incredible.
Similarly, we can make
statements about the cosmos which, however fantastic to the lay mind, are
scientifically verifiable. But when we are told in all seriousness that the late
Pope Pius XII saw the sun dancing in the sky, we can hardly be expected to take
it as an authentic account of some unusual astronomical manifestation. It may
be celestial but it is not scientific.
What cannot be Proved
Belief is often
paraded as knowledge. It is a dangerous venture because there is always the
imminent risk of its being exposed as absurdity if not as fraud. Oftentimes
people who cannot bear to have their beliefs disrupted by argument will, as Gladstone Paradise . Neither can
we (nor they) disprove a mental inmate’s claim to be a reincarnation of Julius
Caesar. Neither can we disprove a thousand other things which both they and we
are nevertheless unable to believe.
Lack if disproof does
not constitute proof or even credibility. If it did, or even if we were to rely
on self-styled authority (and there is no other sort), there could be no limit
to the nonsense put forth as truth.
When Doctor Johnson,
in answer to the pertinacious Boswell, booked ‘Sir, I know the will is free and
there’s an end on’t,’ he may have been expressing a perfectly sincere
conviction, but he was nevertheless making an arrogantly unwarranted assertion
– though of course it is conceivable that such a pesky quibbler as ‘Bozzy’
could drive an impatient man to say anything. The old doctor, for all his
sagacity, knew no such thing. The only way he could have known would have been
through irrefutable proof. And in spite of all the verbal ingenuities on behalf
of free will that the world has so far seen, no such proof has ever been
forthcoming.
Appeal to Faith
However, belief is not
only an essential, used intelligently, it can be an asset to a well-ordered
life. It may be that all of us live more by belief than by knowledge. When we
compare what we can be said to know with all we may be sure we do not know,
when we compare what we know with what we believe, we soon see that our
knowledge is not only infinite, it is comparatively infinitesimal. It has been
hardly won over immense stretches of time. Its great virtue is that it can be
tested and safe-guarded in a way that belief cannot. It can be used and built
upon in a way that we cannot use and build upon belief.
Religion is made up of
belief – when it isn’t make-believe. The two are like identical twins,
difficult to distinguish. If religion were made up of knowledge, we should all
either have to be religious or kept under lock and key. But in religion the
very words ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ have to be qualified. They demand and
deserve what the junior grammarian with delightfully innocent aptness called
perverted commas. They have to be called ‘religious truth’ and ‘religious
knowledge’, which, to a rational mind, is no better than saying ‘ersatz truth’
or ‘synthetic knowledge’. As if truth could or would tolerate any such
impertinent limitations.
Now belief is
primarily the acceptance of some form of statement as true, for the truth of
which there is no conclusive evidence. If there is no evidence at all it
depends on what is called an act of faith. And as the schoolboy said, ‘Faith is
believing what you know to be untrue.’ which, though perhaps not quite
accurate, is not such a howler as it may at first appear.
Yet although belief
cannot be tested and confirmed in the way that knowledge can, it can be tested
in another fashion. It must satisfy at least two questions: firstly, What do we
believe? and secondly, Why do we believe it? They are not as easy as they look.
A ruthlessly honest and exhaustive inquiry into what we suppose we believe is
bound to have some extremely disconcerting results. It may even prove painfully
fatal to more than one long-cherished illusion.
Wishful Thinking
We shall find that
much we thought we had been believing in we had not been believing in at all.
We shall perceive that the nearest we have got is to a sort of second-hand
belief in belief. We may find that we never have actually believed in this
ancient story or that antique doctrine, this tenet or that dogma. We have never
got beyond merely believing that we believed them.
But once those beliefs
which are felt to be sadly and sincerely held have been sorted out, it requires
an even deeper insight, a higher courage and a greater skill, to face the
second more important, more searching question: Why are they held? It is
commonplace that most people believe what they want to believe. They believe
anything that pleases them and especially anything they find expedient.
There was once an old
lady who, in church, was observed to bow her head not only at the name of Jesus
but also every time the Devil was mentioned. When reprimanded by the curate she
replied: ‘Ah young man, it’s all very well to talk, but you never know what you
may be glad of.’ And there you have in a nutshell the prime motive that goes to
the root of practically all non-professional religious beliefs, the wish to be
on the safe side. (30)
Another article from the British Musician and Musical News in April 1937 gives us some insight into Underwood’s piano tuition:
THE EISTEDDFOD
I wonder why the
promoters of so many musical festivals will insist on calling them by the
clumsy and ugly word Eisteddfod. That is to say it is ugly and clumsy on
English tongues however euphonious it may be in the original Welsh. English
people give it the weirdest variety of pronunciations, not one of them correct
to Welsh ears. What is wrong with Contest or Festival? In my part of the
country we have our annual “Eisteddfod” and I am regularly asked every year
whether I think these contests on the whole have a bad or a good effect. It is
a question impossible to answer by a comprehensive affirmative or negative. In
the first place, I can of course speak only from my own personal and therefore
limited experience as an individual teacher. And even within that limit my
answer must necessarily be qualified, though on the whole I think it would be
in favour of competitive festivals. Nevertheless I should not subscribe to the
dictum that competition is an excellent stimulus and leave it at that. I find
it a stimulus to certain types, no doubt the majority. To others however it can
certainly be a damper and the thought of it can tend to discourage natural
aptitude. Many pupils, and I believe, a few good teachers instinctively dislike
the idea of direct competition, mainly because I suppose they are afraid to
face up to the possible effects of failure. But granting the undeniable value
of musical competition, the first thing that strikes me is the small number of
entrants compared with the great number of people who are interested in musical
performance, especially among the younger students. I speak mainly from the
point of view of a teacher of the pianoforte. And in musical festivals as in
examinations, the piano classes almost always outnumber the rest. The number of
children say, up to the age of eleven, who in any given district are being taught
to play the piano must be enormous compared with the meagre thirty or so, who
will be found competing. Why? However much indifference may exist among the
particularly nervous types, it cannot account for such a disparity. And it is
certainly not on account of the expense since the entrance fees are so small. I
believe the reason is that many of those pupils who would enjoy entering for
competition are never given the chance. And they are not given the chance
because so many of them are demonstrably in the hands of the veriest
charlatans, the majority of whom seem to be married women, able (or even unable
sometimes) to strum a few bars of the latest popular rubbish and who give
“lessons” at a very cheap rate in order to provide themselves with pin-money.
In one street of about two hundred houses, I know of four such married women
teachers. Not one of them has the faintest shred of either academical or
practical qualification to teach. Not one of them could play the simplest tune
artistically or has the most rudimentary knowledge of pianoforte technique. Yet
it is known that these four persons take over sixty pupils a week between them!
Looking upon music teaching as a remunerative – one might almost say
fraudulently remunerative – hobby, such so-called teachers are not going to the
trouble, even if they were able, to train pupils for competing in musical
festivals. And in cases where parents may broach the subject such teachers have
been known to declare that they don’t believe in these competitive festivals.
They even assure parents that the whole thing is ruled by favouritism and
wire-pulling, and many parents – often the most credulous people on earth where
their children are concerned – believe them, and in a blissful delusion
continue to send their children to have whatever musical aptitude nature has
given them mutilated beyond redemption. These bogus teachers usually score on
account of their cheapness. So many parents, particularly amongst the poorer
working classes (where there is quite as much talent as amongst those better
off) understand little or nothing of musical art and appear to think that one
teacher is as good as another until, after they have wasted a good deal of
hard-earned cash, they find out by the results that that is not. And then it is
too late. The mischief is done. All too often the unfortunate pupil is for ever
violently set against all musical art. So, one might almost assume then that
those pupils who do enter for the competitions are the cream of their district
so far as training goes. For these, the first advantage of a competition is
that it gives a definite goal to aim at. The piece chosen has to be studied and
mastered with a thoroughness that could scarcely be given to lessons with a
less definite object. The drawback here is that so many children, especially
the quicker ones, are apt to get very tired of sticking to one piece for so
long a period of practice. Slower ones of course need the time, though they
too, often show signs of wearying. And this more especially if the chosen piece
is one they dislike. And herein lies I think an important point for the
consideration of executive committees. Out of all the vast literature of music
there is surely no need to select pieces for performance that are likely to
appeal to only a very limited number of musical tastes. I see no cogency in the
argument that some of these dubious selections are chosen to give them a chance
of becoming not only themselves known but of making more widely known new ideas
and modes of composition. I contend that that is not the purpose of music
festivals. The purpose should be to give all performers the best chance of
comparing their powers and to that end I think the music chosen should have the
widest possible appeal to general musical taste in so far as it is consonant
with the standard required. For instance, this year in the Kettering and
District Eisteddfod (with which I have most association) the pianoforte solo in
the highest class was Dance for the Harpsichord by Delius. I began in this
class with five pupils. Four dropped out because they found the piece an
unmitigated bore for practice. I admit, I am in sympathy with them. Having
tried this composition on a number musical friends I have failed to find one to
whom it appealed. They all said it was ugly. And I confess I agree. It may be a
successful attempt to make the piano sound like a harpsichord. But to what
purpose is that? It remains to our ears a concatenation of dismal discords. And
perpetually listening to it in practice instead of stimulating your imagination
merely stultifies it. In the same class last year John Ireland’s
The following three articles show Underwood’s religious thoughts prior to his death in 1964, much of which is quite inflammatory. The final article ‘On Coming Back to God’ is certainly the last thing Underwood wrote which was published shortly after his death and it is filled with all the fury of a dying man towards a God, if indeed there is a God, who remains inaccessible and apart from human affairs.
SAYING YOUR PRAYERS
“It’s neither prayer
nor providence but a load o’ muck as does it,” the outspoken old farmer told
the reverend gentlemen who was officially handing out pious reasons for a good
crop. The farmer evidently set more store on the knowledge of earthly
experience than the ignorance of heavenly theorising. But although experience
is the best of teachers, experience, like most teachers, often has some
uncommonly dull pupils. And there are none so dull as they who won’t learn. In
spite of the stark staring fact that prayers by the shoal go blatently unheeded
many people still continue unabashed to say their prayers – though it must be
conceded that there are also many people who will say anything rather than
their. The commonest explanation for this disconcerting failure of response
from the Almighty is, that there is a vital difference between the mere
mechanical action of saying your prayers and the profound spiritual
concentration which is the open sesame to genuine communication. That may do
for those who are able to accept it. But not everybody can accept it, even
among those who, in their day and way, have done their share of both saying and
praying. For it cannot be denied that saying and praying are equally liable to
be dashed by a complete lack of recognition. One delightful reason for this is,
that God always does answer prayer, but sometimes the answer is No. trust a
theologian for finding a way out and then calling it a right of way. She was a
knowing old lady who, when she lost her purse, said she hoped it wouldn’t be
found by a theologian, - A man on his knees has been not inaptly likened to a
dog on its hind legs. It could be added that the dog seems to show superior
sense in sitting up to something that is at least more apprehensible than thin
air. John Buchan once described an atheist as somebody who had no invisible
means of support. (John Blunt has been known to describe theists some theists
as doing very well on no visible means of support.) However, Buchan’s idea of
invisible support bears for too strong a resemblance to Hans Anderson’s idea of
the Emperor’s new clothes to carry much weight. It is true that the invisible
is not always the non-existent, but it is well to remember that the
non-existent is always the invisible. The begging dog follows a natural canine
instinct. He sticks to what is visible or its equivalent. The Kneeling Man
follows a sub-natural human delusion. He submits himself to the invisible. But
for all Francis Thompson’s “invisible we view Thee,” the invisible in this
connection has never been shown to be anything but a wish-begotten
self-deception. The dog may cringe before a man, but the man abases himself
before a myth. This, of course, will be and often has been hotly, though always
undecisively, disputed. It has never been coldy and conclusively refuted. Once
it is, we may all safely promise to go down on our knees with due gratitude –
if any is due.
Now if on the one
chance in a hundred the desire that engendered the prayer by some coincidence
becomes gratified, then that, needless to say, is proof that God has graciously
listened and favourably replied. The prayer is answered. If on the remaining
ninety-and-nine chances the result is nil, we still have the same sort of proof
that God has withholden instead of granted, because God always knows best. Or nearly
always. For it is on record that devout worshippers have been heard to hint
that there are occasions when they know even better, as when the old Wee-Free
prayed: “Grant O Lord that we may be in the right as Thou knowest we shall
never change our minds.” Whether or not, the kind of proof here advanced is
quite beyond the skill of any Freethinker and is not amenable to Freethought
kind of test. Sceptics, therefore, have no option but to take it or leave it on
their own responsibility. The method by which such proof is established may be
considered by normal logicians as exhibiting a rum sort of logic, but it is a
thoroughly typical example of the best theologic. (And if “theologic” is not in
the dictionary so much the more for the dictionary.)
There are ways in
which praying does indeed look very like a game of chance. You plump your
request and hope for the best. Praying attracts some minds as gambling attracts
others. The extraordinary thing is that, with rare exceptions, no amount of
disappointment ever seems to bring disillusionment. Both praying and gambling
appear to lead to the sort of unbreakable habit which it is difficult to regard
as anything but a vicious appetite. It grows with what it feeds upon. It is a
state of mind sadly unable to put up any rational resistance. The gambler will
stake his money on a horse. The suppliant stakes his faith on the unseen. If a
well-balanced experience condemns gambling as a mug’s game, it can hardly be
blamed if it repudiates praying as a dupe’s pastime. Just as it requires no
Socrates to demonstrate that no horse ever runs as fast as the money that is
put on it, so it needs no Solomon to show that no power humanly conceivable
could ever keep pace with the impossibly conflicting demands laid upon it as
prayers. While Catholic Peter is imploring God through Our Lady that so-and-so
may speedily come to pass, Protestant Paul is beseeching God through Our Lord
that the very same so-and-so may be for ever frustrated. Two adversaries
simultaneously apply for a crushing victory over each other. J. C. Squire was
thus moved to express an agnostic’s ironic sympathy with the divine dilemma: To
God the embattled nation’s sing and shout, God Save England and God Save the
King, God this, God that and God the other thing. “Good God”, said God, “I’ve
got my work cut out.”
We have constantly
been informed by all sorts of religious instructors that there is no limit to
the reach and power of prayer. We are not informed how this is known or what
exactly it means. Romish prayers, for instance, are far from being the monopoly
of God Almighty. They may be addressed to that rather mixed-up lady elegantly
known as the BV or to any of the large assortment of saints manufactured,
hall-marked and guaranteed by the canon. The saints come cheapest if the votive
candle usually offered to them is anything to go by. As we may expect, that
vested interest of a wily and ambitious priesthood, the Roman Catholic Church,
practices the worst extravagances. Romanists do not stop at the living. With
equal assurance they offer prayers for the dead, although no more than anybody
else can they possibly know anything of the dead beyond that they are dead.
Nevertheless, at an early date, some bright intelligence thought up the useful
idea of a posthumous region called Purgatory, through which the souls of the
departed must pass on an interim purgation. This might be entirely visionary,
but there was nothing visionary about the very solid cash return that soon
began to accrue from the sale of special prayers to help afflicted souls get
through their purging with a maximum of dispatch and a minimum of discomfort.
The living were given every encouragement to buy masses for their dead. For no
matter how bad you are the tough old Romish conscience never hesitates to pray
for you as long as it can prey on you. – If Protestants are less accommodating,
they are on the whole less mercenary. Even that C of E minority who are neither
Catholic nor Protestant and whom the Guardian delightfully, though
misprintedly, recently referred to as Angelicans, do not so openly retail their
prayers on a commercial basis. Non-conformists pride themselves on putting
praying before saying. Their prayers are mostly extemporary. Apart from the
Lord’s Prayer they rarely recite set pieces. They pray with all their hearts
and hardly with all their minds. Among them it is a distinction to be what is
called “gifted in prayer”, which apparently means the ability to provide the
richest feast of unreason with the warmest flow of soulfulness. But since prayers
have the advantage of being immune from any measurable indication of their
success or failure, nobody can prove that the fervour put into them is repaid
by the favour got out of them. Informal prayers may avoid liturgical aridity,
but they, too, slip very easily into the familiar stereotyped jargon that can
be every bit as mechanical without being every bit as professional. Such
criticism would no doubt be enough to provoke one of those tedious reiterations
of the wondrous psychological value of prayer. But such value is too remote
from any real assessment to enter into considerations of the more literal and
practical aspects of prayer. It is a value which probably manifest itself more
strongly in that invariably impassioned, often grotesque and, to out-siders,
always repellent form of prayer known as praise. For those whose souls do not
magnify the Lord and whose spirits are unable to rejoice in God their saviour,
it is difficult to understand, let alone sympathise with the fawning, the
flattering, the cravenly ingratiating fulsomeness Godfearing is the word for it
that goes under the guise of glorifying God. No God worth the capital G he is
given could ever desire or appreciate such servile tribute. No man without
hidebound prepossessions could pay it. – This world, on inescapable evidence,
is a cruelly real if pointless purgatory for the bulk of mankind. If, as
Christianity testifies, it is to be taken as the crowning work of the Christian
creator, then no wonder that sensitive poet A. E. Housman dubbed the Christian
creator brute and blackguard. No wonder such a creator’s grovelling eulogists
suggest the dog on its hind legs chin wagging and tail wagging can be callously
akin. Even if we knew what we cannot know, that the intended recipient of so
much prayerful adulation had indeed an objective personal existence, it would
still be impossible for any man in possession of a free intelligence and a
clear eye to look upon the world as it is and not think or speak of its author
as a this, that and the other old. However, this is a highly respectable
journal. For the time being, it may perhaps at this point be more discreet to
let the matter drop. (32)
THE SCARLET WOMAN
“That was a remarkable
sermon on married life his Eminence preached to us this morning.” said the
young and impressionable unmarried lady to her elderly and less impressionable
much-married companion. “Well, yes, my dear,” came the reply, “it certainly
was. Remarkable is the word for it. I only wish I knew a little about the
matter as he does.” Whether or not the old lady was aware of it, she had
plumped her finger with the nicest precision on one of the most familiar and
irritating impudences of the Roman Catholic Church. The handing out of official
advice by those without experience to those with ample experience but in no way
official. But before considering its shortcomings, we must consider what is
meant when we speak of the Roman Catholic Church. In the ordinary everyday
sense we mean that vast, seething organisation of human beings of all sorts and
sizes, who, having been formally baptised into the Catholic faith, subscribe,
or pretend to subscribe, to its tenets and practices. In short, all those who
are nominally Roman Catholics. It is quite a different matter when we speak of
the Church in a more specific sense, as when we say, not not without justice
that the Church teaches this, preaches that old practices the other. We are
then using a misleading abstraction. We are using a linguistic device which
does more to disguise than to describe the reality. An abstraction cannot
possess explicit attributes or exhibit practical performances. Yet the Romish
Church possesses the most explicit attributes and as an exhibitory performer it
has no religious equal. It is obvious therefore that in thus referring to the
Church we are not thinking of that welter of the ostensibly faithful who
loosely constitute the great lay body. We are not even thinking of the huge
general run of the menial priesthood. Left to themselves these could not even
cohere let alone do any preaching or teaching. All the same we are definitely
referring to human beings. We are in fact referring to that comparatively small
company of the elect who, however remotely they may sit aloft and aloof,
nevertheless rule the roost. They are the animating core on which the life and
activities of the Church in its entirety depend. They are the Catholic chosen
people, in Milton
But they are past
masters in the subtle art of effacing themselves, of achieving intensely
personal aims with a deceivingly impersonal effect. In this way they can keep
so diplomatically out of sight and so dangerously out of mind, which for them
is a trick well worth two. It is most important to realise this and to be
constantly alert to it, for if in any way these secretly high and mighty are
forgotten or overlooked or treated as negligible, we shall never even begin to
understand what is meant by the Church. There could be no such thing as the
Church, apart from them. Whenever we see or hear of the meddlesome Romish
Church overstepping the mark as it so grossly and persistently does, we must
firmly remember that it is they who are the actual aggressors. They are the
sinister power behind the papal throne.
It is astonishing that
there are still such hordes of otherwise intelligent Catholics, as well as many
non-Catholics, who seem unable to grasp this. They obstinately cling to the
vague traditional superstition that there is in existence something called the
Church which has a completely independent entity. They speak of it as though it
were a sort of intermediate, supramundane agency, poised as a means of
communication between heaven and the hierarchy. Hence the various complimentary
or un-complimentary nicknames the Catholic Church has been given. In opposite
camps, Mother Church
Mother Church Mother Church Mother Church
St. John the Divine so
ghoulishly portrays her, in the seventeenth chapter of his blood-and-thunder
nightmare. The Romish Church being infallible is always right. Dissentients are
always wrong. Nevertheless this outrageously silly claim does not conceal the
perpetual Catholic defections. And in these days when the old vindictive
Catholic vengeance is more effectually held at bay, it can fairly be seen and
safely be said, that whatever is good in Romanism is not Catholic and that
whatever is Catholic is not good. (33)
ON COMING BACK TO GOD
In what is nominally
the Christian world and maybe in other religious spheres as well, two of the
most persistent and outstanding of present-day topics are, what is said to be a
marked rise in human depravity and what is seen to be an alarming decline in
religion. According to prevailing religious opinion, not only are the two
inseparably linked but as we might expect the supposed increase in human
wickedness is confidently attributed to the undeniable falling away from
religion. However, the evidence for such a conclusion is to say the least
extremely shaky. In the first place it depends on what is meant by wickedness,
not always as easy to determine as it looks. As for what is meant by religion,
in this sense it is nothing more than churchgoing with all its usual and
sometimes unusual concomitants.
Quandary
It is true we are
solemnly adjured to come back to God, but when we inquire what is meant by
coming back to God and how such a feat is to be accomplished, this also turns
out to be merely a more rhetorical way of saying come back to Church – the one
true church of course, despite their deep-seated and acrimonious differences,
make claim to that nice distinction, to the exclusion of all other churches,
priority is not easy to decide. We have only their very bare word for it. We
are left in a more embarrassing quandary after the inquiry than before.
Besides, although the invitation is always couched as an entreaty, it is
transparently a demand. It is a veiled order for submission to an authority
which has to be taken at its own valuation and subscription to a testimony
which cannot possibly be verified. But the increasing number of people who now
cultivate the habit of freely exercising their own intelligence, are unlikely
to respond to demands of that sort, no matter how pontifical they may be.
Speculative belief,
based more often than not on motives that would wilt before any rational
scrutiny, is always paraded and defended with a
fervour demonstrable knowledge does not require. This injunction to come
back to God, whether it emanates from the educated Archbishop of Canterbury in
his Cathedral pulpit, or from the uneducated Salvationist on his pitch in the
market square, is likely to be enunciated all the more passionately because it
applies to a hypothesis rather than a reality. But no amount of fervour can
transform hypothesis into reality. It cannot even provide unassailable
assurance that it is dealing with something that could possibly be more than
hypothesis. What it can do is to induce yet another delusion in a world already
overstocked with delusions. It is difficult not to suspect that the most
revered and highly sophisticated prelate is privately and therefore
hypocritically aware that he is utilising a hypothesis. The unsophisticated
Salvation Army officer could be completely, because ignorantly, sincere. For
the nuisance if that sincerity, however universally blessed is one of the most
desirable attributes, rarely escapes the curse of being under some form of
undesirable limitation.
But that apart, we are
impelled to the melancholy conclusion that, as so many clerics show signs of
being despondently aware, this God to whom we are bidden to return is, not
altogether unjustifiably, coming to be looked upon as nothing better than a
clerical stooge. A popular passion for God can so readily be fanned into flame
that it usually ends by going up in smoke, leaving nothing behind that it is possible
to lay hold on. In spite of the desperate efforts of modern theologians to
evolve interpretations of God more in keeping with sense and science, to pull
as it were the Woolwich over our eyes, without disrupting orthodox
supernaturalism, this exhortation to come back to God sounds pitifully like
another of those drum-beat slogans which boom all the louder for being hollow.
Sentiment is always more compliant than sense. And no doubt the exhorters know
that an emotional appeal is likely to beget a wider response than any appeal
that is calmly rational. If they see they never say that it is mere temporary.
On the quiet they probably plume themselves upon possessing in this way an
asset which reason cannot share. Yet they could well take warning from experience.
Be not deceived, reason is not mocked. Emotion never wears like reason. When
presently it peters out, there is indeed the metaphorical devil to pay.
Debatable Assumptions
It is curious how so
many modern religionists sighingly take for granted that a present-day increase
of wickedness is as well established as a present-day decline of religion. But
it is only one of the sights of the times. There have been similar doleful
assumptions in every age. And even for some of the religions as well as the non-religions,
such assumptions have always been highly debatable. They could never be
decisively tested. One generation’s virtue is another generation’s vice. The
ethics of Deuteronomy may be wildly inappropriate to the space age. Irreligion
is arbitrary in a way religion cannot be. In the last resort it is all a matter
of opinion just as it will always be a matter of opinion whether the supposed
increase in wickedness is the cause or the result of the decay of religion. It
may be observed in passing that opinion either way makes a poor testimonial for
the regenerative power of religion. As for the decay of religion, that is not a
matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact. This is at least sufficiently
recognised to provoke anxious spokesmen, both lay and professional to constant
outbursts of dismay and bitter diatribes against any kind of opposition.
Religion is admittedly still full of fight, fighting for its life in a fight to
the death.
Wickedness
It should be plain
enough that wickedness (or for that matter goodness) cannot be defined or
condemned for the non-religious according to the welter of contradictions
euphemistically described as religious principles. When religious protagonists
hold forth about the modern increase in human wickedness, they are not thinking
half as much about the evils which they suppose men do through rejecting
Christianity as they are thinking of the rejection in itself. It is that which
is the prime wickedness. It is that which so effectually puts the churches –
and the protagonists – out of gear. That is the basic evil which, once
rectified would, they claim, automatically rectify all contingent evils. Maybe,
on their definition of evil, or if it could be maintained that on the whole
those who belong to the Church lead better lives than those who don’t. But can
it be so maintained? To many, the truth often seems very much the other way
about. In so far as the Church actually is in decline, it is, as Dean Inge saw,
the Christians themselves who have done far more to bring it down than any
outsiders. As with an over-ripe pear the rot hiddenly originates in its own
interior.
Serious thinkers,
especially Freethinker, governed by their backbone rather than their wishbone
and un-hampered by religious possessions, are bound to take an aggressively
critical view of churchianity. For them, churchianity is by no means inevitably
to be equated even with Christianity let alone natural human goodness. They are
neither perturbed nor surprised by the widespread indifference to empty pews
and the growing distaste for the parson, who may be excellent as a man but
anathema in what he represents professionally. They look with an irrepressible
derision upon the ritualistic antics of eminent ecclesiastics or the capers cut
by the big pots of the small denominations. For too many of these shining
lights cast sinister shadows. It is not unknown, it is not even uncommon, for
their own followers to express the caustic suspicion that they would no more
dare to preach all they practice than they would care to practice all they
preach. Sensible people, who are satisfied that one world at a time is as much
as they can cope with, look askance, as well they may, at the worldliness so
brazenly displayed by some of these dog-collared exemplars of the unworldly. As
never before, people see through that sort of humbug, without any nonsense
about a glass darkly. And the humbugs know it. That is why they wrangle so
pertinaceously for early indoctrination in the schools. They know that at least
a few young birds may almost certainly be caught with chaff.
Now whatever
difference of opinion there may be about the nature and functions of human
wickedness, it will hardly be denied, either by the religious or the
non-religious that world-wide wickedness is indeed abundantly in evidence. If
such rampant and ubiquitous inhumanities as greed, cruelty, rascality, tyranny
and a hundred others are not wickedness to every honest mind, then there is no
such thing as wickedness. And evil deeds, like troubles, are anything but few
and far between. If it is a fact as many religionists contend that mankind is
still no better, that mankind is even worse than it was two thousand years ago,
what sort of compliment is that to the influence of Christianity, to the
guidance of the churches, to the mystic power to whom we are besought to renew
our allegiance? When the exponents of religion are plumped with this they hedge
and dodge and trot out every conceivable casuistry to explain it away. They
never succeed. But a still more striking feature is that while the apologists
are so busy explaining away, while they are so vehemently expounding the cause
or reviling the consequence of man’s stubborn recalcitrance, they are either
blindly obtuse or craftily impervious to a third and, one may risk saying, more
cogent point of view. It is that a great deal of modern wickedness, deplored by
Secularists as strongly as religionists, is not the outcome of irreligion at
all, it is literally and directly the outcome of religion.
But that is too
complex a proposition to be dealt with here and now in detail. However this at
least can be said. No other human activity has ever practiced more deceit than
religion and no other kind of deceit has, in modern times, ever been so
rapidly, so relentlessly and so widely exposed. No doubt two world wars did
much to aid the process and to leave behind a trail of disillusionment probably
unparalleled in history. Where religious faith among the older generation has
not altogether evaporated, it has largely become diluted to such inefficiency
that it is useless for handing down to a younger and more vital generation. All
the same, the loudly lamented increase in general human depravity is
questionable. It may well be that with youthfulness particularly, it is largely
a matter of newer, unfamiliar and more baffling forms. But this much is surely
certain. It is no use calling the unregenerate to come back to God until they
can come to back God. And it is no more feasible to back God whose very
existence remains in question than it would be to back an imaginary horse.
Prove that God is and back we will all come. But if coming back to God merely
means a resumption of the religious ruck that is being slowly maybe, but
resolutely and sanely discarded, then the real hope and the right intent is not
to come back to God but to back away from him as far and as fast as we possibly
can. (34)
NOTES:
- Reginald Underwood in The Freethinker,
volume 84. 1964, p. 144, in reference to Colin McCall’s article on
‘Shakespeare and Religion’ in the 10th April edition.
- Daniel Underwood and Frances Abbot were
married in Finedon, Northamptonshire on
- Mary Ann Jacquest who was born in
- Richard Jacquest Underwood was summoned
for riding a motorcycle ‘without an effective silencer’ in
- ‘Hidden Lights’ quotation from Pleasures
and Pastimes in Victorian Britain. Pamela Horn. Thrupp, Stroud
[Gloucestershire], Sutton Publishing Ltd. 1999. p. 244.
- Daily News (
- Daily Herald (London). Saturday 14th
September 1935. p. 8.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- All information concerning Cyril Wilson is
from the Finedon Newsletter, June 2016 (Finedon Local History Society),
pp. 9-11, by Mick Britton. Additional information is from English Poetry
of the Second World War: a Biobibliography. Catherine W. Reilly.
- Printed as poems LXX and LXXI
respectively. Cyril Wilson also had poems published in: ‘Oasis: The Middle
East Anthology of Poems from the Forces’. Cairo. Salamander Productions.
1943., and ‘Return to Oasis: War Poems and Recollections from the Middle
East, 1940-1946’. London. Shepheard-Walwyn. 1980.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- Market Harborough Advertiser and
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.
- British Musician and Musical News. volume
13, number 131. November 1936. p. 242, and volume 14, number 139. 1937. p.
153.
- ‘An Autobiography “Hidden Lights”’.
British Musician and Musical News. Volume 15, issue 145. January 1938. p.
18, continued on p. 24. The text reads ‘in 1911, when 12 years old’ –
Reginald was actually 16-17 years old in 1911. ‘Pachmann’ is the Russian
pianist, Vladimir de Pachmann (1848-1933). Sir George Clement Martin
(1844-1916) of
- Letters to the Editor. Literary Guide.
Volume 70. 1955. pp. 31-32. Underwood also had an article published in the
Literary Guide, volume 71, May 1956, p. 25 titled ‘The Bewitchment of
Language’.
- The Impotence of Omnipotence [Views and Opinions,
- The Freethinker. Volume 84. 1964. p. 380. Colin
McCall was joint editor of The Freethinker from 1957 and sole editor from
1959-1965. The Views and Opinions McCall is referring to is ‘On Coming
Back to God’,
- The Lure of the Ballet. British Musician
and Musical News. Volume 13, number 132. December 1936. pp. 268-270.
- Wobble Wobble. British Musician and
Musical News. Volume 15, number 145. January 1938. pp. 5-7.
- The Point of No Reward. The Freethinker.
Volume 84.
- A Criticism of the Critic. British
Musician and Musical News. Volume 14, number 133. January 1937. pp. 15-17.
- The Nature of Belief. The Humanist. (published
by The Rationalist Association). Volume 78, number 3, March 1963. pp.
78-79.
- The Eisteddfod. British Musician and
Musical News. Volume 14, number 136. April 1937. pp. 74-76.
- Saying Your Prayers. The Freethinker.
Volume 84.
- The Scarlet Woman. The Freethinker. Volume
84.
- On Coming Back to God. The Freethinker.
Volume 84.
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