Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/39

13 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 13 for the first time in English history, deserted the aristocrats and lined up with the proletariat. Instead of adoring the graces they began denouncing dis- graces. In place of priding themselves on their immunity from the vulgar hobby known as politics, they began to boom and bleat like a lot of leading articles. And they had a thoroughly enjoyable time. For the new game gratified the vanity which is the curse of all their tribe by its flattering sense of put- ting everybody right ; and it satisfied the disrespect- fulness which is the chief of all their charms by giving them for target every rule, religion, creed, convention which had lent its countenance to civili- zation by forming part of it. They became infidels, atheists, anarchists, cosmogonists, vegetarians, anti- vivisectionists, anti-vaccinationists. They revelled in a fresh field of topics — they founded numberless societies to listen to their oratory and countless papers that would print their verse and prose ; it was canvas and model combined. The big men liked the feeling of doing practical spade-work at last ; the little ones (and there seemed to be such a dreadful lot of these) simply loved being ranked as "intellectuals." It gave humble giants, like Morris, a chance to stoop and be chivalrous. It hoisted the pigmies on to platforms where they could hector and strut. It was fine. Now this was all very well in the case of a Morris, who had already given us his Guenevere ; and it prob- ably couldn't much damage even a Cunninghame- Graham— for he was a rebel in any case, a Highland rieve by birth, and all these isms were to him simply so many gauntlets which he could fiing in the faces of the fat fools he despised : when he charged the ranked policemen in Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday, ostensibly in the cause of Democracy, he was really only giving expression, I am sure, to his eternal con-