GEORGE SHAW - Collected Works

“And the idlers and loafers,” said Erskine. “What of them?”

“You and I, in fact,” said Trefusis, “die of starvation, I suppose, unless we choose to work, or unless they give us a little out-door relief in consideration of our bad bringing-up.”

“Do you mean that they will plunder us?” said Sir Charles.

“I mean that they will make us stop plundering them. If they hesitate to strip us naked, or to cut our throats if we offer them the smallest resistance, they will show us more mercy than we ever showed them. Consider what we have done to get our rents in Ireland and Scotland, and our dividends in Egypt, if you have already forgotten my photographs and their lesson in our atrocities at home. Why, man, we murder the great mass of these toilers with overwork and hardship; their average lifetime is not half as long as ours. Human nature is the same in them as in us. If we resist them, and succeed in restoring order, as we call it, we will punish them mercilessly for their insubordination, as we did in Paris in 1871, where, by-the-bye, we taught them the folly of giving their enemies quarter. If they beat us, we shall catch it, and serve us right. Far better turn honest at once and avert bloodshed. Eh, Erskine?”

Erskine was considering what reply he should make, when Trefusis disconcerted him by ringing a bell. Presently the elderly woman appeared, pushing before her an oblong table mounted on wheels, like a barrow.

“Thank you,” said Trefusis, and dismissed her. “Here is some good wine, some good water, some good fruit, and some good bread. I know that you cling to wine as to a good familiar creature. As for me, I make no distinction between it and other vegetable poisons. I abstain from them all. Water for serenity, wine for excitement. I, having boiling springs of excitement within myself, am never at a loss for it, and have only to seek serenity. However,” (here he drew a cork), “a generous goblet of this will make you feel like gods for half an hour at least. Shall we drink to your conversion to Socialism?”

Sir Charles shook his head.

“Come, Mr. Donovan Brown, the great artist, is a Socialist, and why should not you be one?”

“Donovan Brown!” exclaimed Sir Charles with interest. “Is it possible? Do you know him personally?”

“Here are several letters from him. You may read them; the mere autograph of such a man is interesting.”

Sir Charles took the letters and read them earnestly, Erskine reading over his shoulder.

“I most cordially agree with everything he says here,” said Sir Charles. “It is quite true, quite true.”

“Of course you agree with us. Donovan Brown’s eminence as an artist has gained me one recruit, and yours as a baronet will gain me some more.”

“But—”

“But what?” said Trefusis, deftly opening one of the albums at a photograph of a loathsome room.

“You are against that, are you not? Donovan Brown is against it, and I am against it. You may disagree with us in everything else, but there you are at one with us. Is it not so?”

“But that may be the result of drunkenness, improvidence, or—”

“My father’s income was fifty times as great as that of Donovan Brown. Do you believe that Donovan Brown is fifty times as drunken and improvident as my father was?”

“Certainly not. I do not deny that there is much in what you urge. Still, you ask me to take a rather important step.”

“Not a bit of it. I don’t ask you to subscribe to, join, or in any way pledge yourself to any society or conspiracy whatsoever. I only want your name for private mention to cowards who think Socialism right, but will not say so because they do not think it respectable. They will not be ashamed of their convictions when they learn that a baronet shares them. Socialism offers you something already, you see; a good use for your hitherto useless title.”

Sir Charles colored a little, conscious that the example of his favorite painter had influenced him more than his own conviction or the arguments of Trefusis.

“What do you think, Chester?” he said. “Will you join?”

“Erskine is already committed to the cause of liberty by his published writings,” said Trefusis. “Three of the pamphlets on that shelf contain quotations from ‘The Patriot Martyrs.’”

Erskine blushed, flattered by being quoted; an attention that had been shown him only once before, and then by a reviewer with the object of proving that the Patriot Martyrs were slovenly in their grammar.

“Come!” said Trefusis. “Shall I write to Donovan Brown that his letters have gained the cordial assent and sympathy of Sir Charles Brandon?”

“Certainly, certainly. That is, if my unknown name would be of the least interest to him.”

“Good,” said Trefusis, filling his glass with water. “Erskine, let us drink to our brother Social Democrat.”

Erskine laughed loudly, but not heartily. “What an ass you are, Brandon!” he said. “You, with a large landed estate, and bags of gold invested in railways, calling yourself a Social Democrat! Are you going to sell out and distribute—to sell all that thou hast and give to the poor?”

“Not a penny,” replied Trefusis for him promptly. “A man cannot be a Christian in this country. I have tried it and found it impossible both in law and in fact. I am a capitalist and a landholder. I have railway shares, mining shares, building shares, bank shares, and stock of most kinds; and a great trouble they are to me. But these shares do not represent wealth actually in existence; they are a mortgage on the labor of unborn generations of laborers, who must work to keep me and mine in idleness and luxury. If I sold them, would the mortgage be cancelled and the unborn generations released from its thrall? No. It would only pass into the hands of some other capitalist, and the working class would be no better off for my self-sacrifice. Sir Charles cannot obey the command of Christ; I defy him to do it. Let him give his land for a public park; only the richer classes will have leisure to enjoy it. Plant it at the very doors of the poor, so that they may at last breathe its air, and it will raise the value of the neighboring houses and drive the poor away. Let him endow a school for the poor, like Eton or Christ’s Hospital, and the rich will take it for their own children as they do in the two instances I have named. Sir Charles does not want to minister to poverty, but to abolish it. No matter how much you give to the poor, everything except a bare subsistence wage will be taken from them again by force. All talk of practicing Christianity, or even bare justice, is at present mere waste of words. How can you justly reward the laborer when you cannot ascertain the value of what he makes, owing to the prevalent custom of stealing it? I know this by experience. I wanted to pay a just price for my wife’s tomb, but I could not find out its value, and never shall. The principle on which we farm out our national industry to private marauders, who recompense themselves by black-mail, so corrupts and paralyzes us that we cannot be honest even when we want to. And the reason we bear it so calmly is that very few of us really want to.”

“I must study this question of value,” said Sir Charles dubiously, refilling his goblet. “Can you recommend me a good book on the subject?”

“Any good treatise on political economy will do,” said Trefusis. “In economics all roads lead to Socialism, although in nine cases out of ten, so far, the economist doesn’t recognize his destination, and incurs the malediction pronounced by Jeremiah on those who justify the wicked for reward. I will look you out a book or two. And if you will call on Donovan Brown the next time you are in London, he will be delighted, I know. He meets with very few who are capable of sympathizing with him from both his points of view—social and artistic.”