Geoffrey Mortimer

“ Education must be freed from the restrictions and hindrances of Respectability, and made catholic, comprehensive, and equal for both sexes.
The canker has eaten too long at the heart of our great nation. Its ravages, if unchecked, will ultimately destroy our prestige, and we shall fall as Babylon, Rome, and Greece have fallen. Our social affections are blighted and chilled by this fell disease, our emotions are shrivelled, our national virility enfeebled. Colonies in their youth offer us a good illustration of the rapid progress of a people who have abandoned the cant of Respectability. ”

“ They scout eccentricity and individuality of speculation and judgment; they live in streets of houses all built alike; they imitate each others' mode of dress, think each others' thoughts, and say "It is better to be dead than out of the fashion!"
Originality! is there anything greater under the sun? "Yes," say the Respectables, "it is better to be a sheep amongst sheep than to gain a name for eccentricity." This is why our national, moral, intellectual, and artistic advance is so slow: men and women infected by the craze for respectability act as dead weights on the arms of pioneers. ”

“ No great man has ever been, or ever can be, of the respectabilities, for the simple reason that the great are not ordinary, and the ordinary alone are respectable. Have you ever read or heard of a truly noble man or woman who was also respectable? Nobility of character and a reputation for respectability, the two things are utterly incompatible! Supposing it possible for an original mind to pursue the preposterous chimera of respectability, where would such a mind find itself ultimately? ”

“ To a Respectable, all are mad who seek to destroy illusions, to show the inside of things, and to disencumber the social ground of the tares and thistles that make such a brave show. He loves his world of seems and shams and hypocrisies.
Our hope is in the young, in the rising generation, ere they are hopelessly crushed and disfigured beyond all recognition beneath the wheels of Respectability's triumphal one-horse brougham ”

“ She marries late, dazed with joy that her hour has come at last, and frequently awakes in the first year of marriage to the truth that she knew little about men in general, and not nearly enough about the man she has wedded; that she was wofully inexperienced and ignorant, and that Respectability condemns her to drain the bitter cup of disappointment to the dregs, to drain it with composure and a smiling face to the world. She was not allowed to mix freely with men. ”

“ When we are very young and enthusiastic about the great part we mean to play in the reformation of society, we work ourselves into fearful furies of indignation with those who have persecuted innovators in all ages. Later in life we learn that the persecutor is more of an ass than a villain; and the more we study humanity, not forgetting our own human nature, the more are we persuaded that this is the right scientific view to take. ”

“ But I say that it is such fellows as Pugsley who force girls to sell themselves in the street. I ask you, my Respectable sister, could you live yourself and help to support your widowed mother and two young children on a wage of seven shillings a week? I have known one of Pugsley's women workers try to do this till death came with its eternity of rest for that poor, semi-starved, aching body. To me it is a constant source of wonder, and a matter of profound respect for woman's moral courage that more of Pugsley's ill-paid women helpers do not walk the streets for hire. ”

“ To live respectably, as the world deems respectability, is to live a lie. No man or woman with a part to play in life can play it [Pg 6] well if they are constantly exercised as to what people will think—people, in this instance, standing for Respectability. Can any wholesome influence come out of the frowsy atmosphere of a villa inhabited by Veneerings? As well expect to find lilies within the fences of the alkali works. The fact is that what Respectability thinks is never of the slightest importance to a man of real moral stamina and vigour of intellect. ”

“ I have conceived of a suburban colony of houses where a man might live and be natural and healthy-minded among his neighbours; where he might, if he chose, walk about in cool, backwoods dress, a shirt, breeks, and wide-brimmed hat—or no hat—in hot weather, without inciting derision, or becoming a pariah. But Villadom cares nothing for naturalness, nor liberty of opinion and conduct; and, unconscious of the madness of its severe conventionality, it deems those insane who cultivate ideas and try to live up to them. ”

“ But this dread is somewhat ill-founded and exaggerated, because there are many unconventional men only too ready to warmly welcome the women who revolt, and not only to bid them cheer, but to pay them high homage for their bravery and independence. In the long run, a woman gains far more esteem and friendship in the army of the Unconventionalists than she wins from the host of the Respectables.
Timidity is one of the prime sources of the disease of Respectability in both sexes, and women are by nature more timid than men in the matter of revolt against ignorant Public Opinion. ”

“ Will the prosperous business career of the future be alone compatible with a low standard of thought, and a corrupt canon of commercial morals?
"Life without industry is guilt; industry without art is brutality." Now, in the push and drive of industry at the close of this century it is as hard for myriads to keep the soul alive, as it is for many thousands to find food for the body. The trader who makes Mammon his idol, who thinks money, and spends his wealth irrationally, brutalises life. ”

“ We must search, as it were, in the mode of Diogenes for "the highly organised man, brought to supreme delicacy of sentiment, as in practical power, religion, liberty, sense of honour and taste," who stands for Emerson's type of civilised humanity. That such examples are not unknown at this stage is as certain as the fact that many more are in the process of evolution. And although savagery in idea and practice confronts us this way and that in each scale of society, we shall do ill if we approach the study of modern barbarism in a vein of mocking pessimism. ”

“ The evil is in the setting up of a barbaric aim of life in all classes. Our greatest ideals are the commercial and the voluptuous. The eternal pursuit of the frivolous, which makes up the chief part of what is foolishly termed "high life," and the sordid middle-class struggle to amass money, are accepted by the shallow as tokens of our progress in civilisation. We are rich and luxurious; we are therefore far above the savage. ”

“ I am not tilting at Universities, but against Respectability in every guise. With the growth of power in the bourgeois class, the Universities have, to a large degree, degenerated from halls of knowledge into mere forcing beds of the disease of Respectability. ”

“ I know about competition, and the law of demand and supply, and I take my stand on sound social science. But no science that I have studied convinces me that this plutocracy and plunder and monopoly are good for anyone but the plutocrats and the plunderers. And not good for them, either, in any moral sense. Is it moral to kill the social affections? I say that the professional burglar is a model of virtue by the side of Pugsley. He does not pose as a Christian philanthropist and a friend of the people when he goes about his nefarious business. ”

“ Women are the larger part of humanity in this country, and, that part being Philistine, it must exercise a bad influence upon society in the mass. I do not deny that the spirit of rebellion lurks in every woman's breast, but, for all that, women are not readily persuaded to rebel against absurd conventions. Their great desire is to be on the popular side, and in the ranks of the mightier force, because unpopular causes are generally accounted discreditable by the majority. ”

“ No; for when we consider what modern science has done in its infancy, we may surely reckon upon greater victory in days now dawning. To support this inspiring creed of science we do not need to fabricate evidences out of improbability, conjecture, and fallacy; for the proofs are plain and convincing, and will survive the severest criticism. Truly, if we make moan one day for the tenacity of unreason in the human brain, we may rejoice on the morrow in the thought that never in history has the outlook been brighter. ”

“ An author of mediocre ability, possessing that quality of self-assertiveness known commonly as "side," can far outpace the shy genius in the race for public esteem. The brazen bumptiousness and supercilious disdain of the mere talent which lacks astute worldly wisdom are the components of the snobbishness that makes for social success. Society closes the door upon the needy philosopher in his threadbare garb; but it throws its portals wide to welcome the adept of claptrap, whose higher philosophy is the study of the main chance. ”

“ On Sunday the air is alive with the clanging of bells, and, in orderly procession, every family proceeds to church, the fathers in all the gravity of umbrellas and prayer-books, the matrons in silk mantles and clumsy, ready-made elastic sides; the girls in all the gaiety of their summer dresses, with lively bustles bobbing; the young men in frock-coats which show off their broad shoulders, as from time to time they pull their tawny moustaches. ”

“ The main attack was made by the army of Respectables, who became exceedingly angry with Charles Darwin because he calmly demolished a number of groundless suppositions as to the origin of life, the descent of man, and the development of the sense of morality. Your true conventionalist, confronted with a new and startling idea, is like the savage who lashes himself into a passion at the sight of a steamboat or some other mechanical invention. The savage wants to smash the machine and the man who made it. ”

“ Very engrossing is the study of Respectability in high places. "These be the men we are told to look up to," said a tattered plebeian, whose eyes had been blasted by the hunting magistrate who was riding on other men's land. But that we do "look up to" our rich, idle folk with an avid awe is undoubted. Few persons in a town are especially interested in hearing that Mr. Herbert Spencer is there on a visit; but we are most of us anxious to shake hands with a prize-fighter, or the "Jubilee Plunger," or to take tea with a millionaire's wife. ”

“ What a mighty and fearsome foe to knowledge is Academic Respectability. Beneath its sway the seats of learning become fusty abiding-places of mouldy pedantry. It posts its wary lackeys at every avenue of research to warn back adventurous explorers, with their theological or political red flags and notice boards. Academic Respectability [Pg 66] expelled Shelley. It frowns upon Bain, Francis Newman, and other bold investigators and scholars of modern times. It killed Socrates, persecuted Spinoza, insulted David Hume, sneered at Buckle, and derided Darwin. ”

“ It is almost a sheer question of chance if they do not. For this fearful uncertainty Respectability is much to blame. Girls are immured and guarded, like vestal virgins of old; there is no wholesome widespread social commingling of the sexes. Boys are free; but what is their liberty worth to them, when girls are watched, chaperoned, and secluded at the very age when their society is most sought by the youth of the opposite sex? This nunnery system is practically restricted to the middle-class Respectables. ”

“ I have said I should speak of the great discovery I have made within the last few days—the discovery that all our spiritual sources of life are poisoned, and that our whole bourgeois society rests upon a soil teeming with the pestilence of lies. For I am going to revolt against the lie that truth resides in the majority. ”

“ Women are particularly susceptible to the disease of Respectability. Our sisters esteem rank and birth; they bow down to all kinds of idols with a veneration seldom equalled in men. Form, ceremonies, modes of dress, points of etiquette, and social observances mean more to them than to us; and it is difficult to prove to them the hollowness and inutility of mere seems, because externals satisfy their sense of decorum and give them pleasure. The average bourgeois woman reads the court news and aristocratic tittle-tattle with avidity mingled with envy. ”