Upton, Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1904

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_ DEAR HERBERT,--One of those incredible incidents has just happened here, an incident that makes one feel how little one knows of human beings, and that truth, in spite of the conscientious toil of Mr. H. G. Wells, does still continue to keep ahead of fiction. Here is the story. Some money is missed in a master's house; circumstances seem to point to its having been abstracted by one of the boys. A good-natured, flighty boy is suspected, absolutely without reason, as it turns out; though he is the sort of boy to mislay his own books and other portable property to any extent, and to make no great difficulty under pressure of immediate need, and at the last moment, about borrowing some one else's chattels. On this occasion the small boys in the house, of whom he is one, solemnly accuse him of the theft, and the despoiled owner entreats that the money may be returned. He protests that he has not taken it. The matter comes to the ears of the house-master, who investigates the matter in the course of the evening, and interviews the supposed culprit. The boy denies it again quite unconcernedly and frankly, goes away from the interview, and wandering about, finds the small boys of the house assembled in one of the studies discussing a matter with great interest. "What has happened?" says our suspected friend. "Haven't you heard?" says one of them; "Campbell's grandmother" (Campbell is another of the set) "has sent him a tip of L2." "Oh, has she?" says the boy, with a smile of intense meaning; "I shall have to go my rounds again." This astonishing confession of his guilt is received with the interest it deserves, and Campbell is advised to lock up his money, or to hand it over to the custody of the house-master. In the course of the evening another amazing event occurs; the boy whose money was stolen finds the whole of it, quite intact, in the pocket of his cricketing flannels, where he now remembers having put it. The supposed culprit is restored to favour, and becomes a reliable member of society. One of the small boys tells the matron the story of our hero's amazing remark on the subject, in his presence. The matron stares at him, bewildered, and asks him what made him say it. "Oh, only to rag them," says the boy; "they were all so excited about it." "But don't you see, you silly boy," says the kind old dame, "that if the money had not been found, you would have been convicted out of your own mouth of having been the thief?" "Oh yes," says the boy cheerfully; "but I couldn't help it--it came into my head."

Of course this is an exceptional case; but it illustrates a curious thing about boys--I mentioned it the other day--which is, their extraordinary willingness and even anxiety to be thought worse than they are. Even boys of unexceptionable principle will talk as if they were not only not particular, but positively vicious. They don't like aspersions on their moral character to be made by others, but they rejoice to blacken themselves; and not even the most virtuous boys can bear to be accused of virtue, or thought to be what is called "Pi." This does not happen when boys are by themselves; they will then talk unaffectedly about their principles and practice, if their interlocutor is also unaffected. But when they are together, a kind of disease of self-accusation attacks them. I suppose that it is the perversion of a wholesome instinct, the desire not to be thought better than they are; but part of the exaggerated stories that one hears about the low moral tone of public schools arises from the fact that innocent boys coming to a public school infer, and not unreasonably, from the talk of their companions that they are by no means averse to evil, even when, as is often the case, they are wholly untainted by it.

The same thing seems to me to prevail very widely nowadays. The old-fashioned canting hypocrisy, like that of the old servant in the Master of Ballantrae, who, suffering under the effects of drink, bears himself like a Christian martyr, has gone out; just as the kind of pride is extinct against which the early Victorian books used to warn children, and which was manifested by sitting in a carriage surveying a beggar with a curling lip--a course of action which was invariably followed by the breaking of a Bank, or by some mysterious financial operation involving an entire loss of fortune and respectability.

Nowadays the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is reversed. The Pharisee tells his friends that he is in reality far worse than the publican, while the publican thanks God that he is not a Pharisee. It is only, after all, a different kind of affectation, and perhaps even more dangerous, because it passes under the disguise of a virtue. We are all miserable sinners, of course; but it is no encouragement to goodness if we try to reduce ourselves all to the same level of conscious corruption. The only advantage would be if, by our humility, we avoided censoriousness. Let us frankly admit that our virtues are inherited, and that any one who had had our chances would have done as well or better than ourselves; neither ought we to be afraid of expressing our admiration of virtue, and, if necessary, our abhorrence of vice, so long as that abhorrence is genuine. The cure for the present state of things is a greater naturalness. Perhaps it would end in a certain increase of priggishness; but I honestly confess that nowadays our horror of priggishness, and even of seriousness, has grown out of all proportion; the command not to be a prig has almost taken its place in the Decalogue. After all, priggishness is often little more than a failure in tact, a breach of good manners; it is priggish to be superior, and it is vulgar to let a consciousness of superiority escape you. But it is not priggish to be virtuous, or to have a high artistic standard, or to care more for masterpieces of literature than for second-rate books, any more than it is priggish to be rich or well-connected. The priggishness comes in when you begin to compare yourself with others, and to draw distinctions. The Pharisee in the parable was a prig; and just as I have known priggish hunting men, and priggish golfers, and even priggish card-players, so I have known people who were priggish about having a low standard of private virtue, because they disapproved of people whose standard was higher. The only cure is frankness and simplicity; and one should practise the art of talking simply and directly among congenial people of what one admires and believes in.

How I run on! But it is a comfort to write about these things to some one who will understand; to "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." By the way, how careless the repetition of "stuff'd" "stuff" is in that line! And yet it can't be unintentional, I suppose?

I enjoy your letters very much; and I am glad to hear that you are beginning to "take interest," and are already feeling better. Your views of the unchangeableness of personality are very surprising; but I must think them over for a little; I will write about them before long. Meanwhile, my love to you all.--Ever yours,

T. B. _

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