Courage - J. M. Barrie
THE RECTORIAL ADDRESS DELIVERED
AT ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY
MAY 3rd 1922
COURAGE
BY
J. M. BARRIE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED
TORONTO
To the Red Gowns of St. Andrews
Canada, 1922
You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue
in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten
and forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someone
said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience--and you may find
in the end it is yours also--the people I have cared for most and who
have seemed most worth caring for--my December roses--have been very
simple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone
of importance, so as to do you credit. I suppose you had a melting
for me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walked
similar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you will
soon set forth. I would that I could put into your hands a staff
for that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myself
that I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose every
cranny of my mind.
But, alas, when the hour strikes for the Rector to answer to his
call he is unable to become the undergraduate he used to be, and so
the only door into you is closed. We, your elders, are much more
interested in you than you are in us. We are not really important to
you. I have utterly forgotten the address of the Rector of my time,
and even who he was, but I recall vividly climbing up a statue to tie
his colours round its neck and being hurled therefrom with contumely.
We remember the important things. I cannot provide you with that
staff for your journey; but perhaps I can tell you a little about it,
how to use it and lose it and find it again, and cling to it more
than ever. You shall cut it--so it is ordained--every one of you for
himself, and its name is Courage. You must excuse me if I talk a
good deal about courage to you to-day. There is nothing else much
worth speaking about to undergraduates or graduates or white-haired
men and women. It is the lovely virtue--the rib of Himself that God
sent down to His children.
My special difficulty is that though you have had literary rectors
here before, they were the big guns, the historians, the philosophers;
you have had none, I think, who followed my more humble branch, which
may be described as playing hide and seek with angels. My puppets
seem more real to me than myself, and I could get on much more
swingingly if I made one of them deliver this address. It is
M'Connachie who has brought me to this pass. M'Connachie, I should
explain, as I have undertaken to open the innermost doors, is the name
I give to the unruly half of myself: the writing half. We are
complement and supplement. I am the half that is dour and practical
and canny, he is the fanciful half; my desire is to be the family
solicitor, standing firm on my hearthrug among the harsh realities of
the office furniture; while he prefers to fly around on one wing. I
should not mind him doing that, but he drags me with him. I have
sworn that M'Connachie shall not interfere with this address to-day;
but there is no telling. I might have done things worth while if it
had not been for M'Connachie, and my first piece of advice to you at
any rate shall be sound: don't copy me. A good subject for a
rectorial address would be the mess the Rector himself has made of
life. I merely cast this forth as a suggestion, and leave the working
of it out to my successor. I do not think it has been used yet.
My own theme is Courage, as you should use it in the great fight that
seems to me to be coming between youth and their betters; by youth,
meaning, of course, you, and by your betters us. I want you to take
up this position: That youth have for too long left exclusively in
our hands the decisions in national matters that are more vital to
them than to us. Things about the next war, for instance, and why
the last one ever had a beginning. I use the word fight because it
must, I think, begin with a challenge; but the aim is the reverse of
antagonism, it is partnership. I want you to hold that the time has
arrived for youth to demand that partnership, and to demand it
courageously. That to gain courage is what you came to St. Andrews
for. With some alarums and excursions into college life. That is
what I propose, but, of course, the issue lies with M'Connachie.
Your betters had no share in the immediate cause of the war; we know
what nation has that blot to wipe out; but for fifty years or so we
heeded not the rumblings of the distant drum, I do not mean by lack
of military preparations; and when war did come we told youth, who
had to get us out of it, tall tales of what it really is and of the
clover beds to which it leads.
We were not meaning to deceive, most of us were as honourable and as
ignorant as the youth themselves; but that does not acquit us of
failings such as stupidity and jealousy, the two black spots in
human nature which, more than love of money, are at the root of all
evil. If you prefer to leave things as they are we shall probably
fail you again. Do not be too sure that we have learned our lesson,
and are not at this very moment doddering down some brimstone path.
I am far from implying that even worse things than war may not come
to a State. There are circumstances in which nothing can so well
become a land, as I think this land proved when the late war did
break out and there was but one thing to do. There is a form of
anaemia that is more rotting than even an unjust war. The end will
indeed have come to our courage and to us when we are afraid in dire
mischance to refer the final appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
I suppose all the lusty of our race, alive and dead, join hands on
that.
'And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.'
But if you must be in the struggle, the more reason you should know
why, before it begins, and have a say in the decision whether it is
to begin. The youth who went to the war had no such knowledge, no
such say; I am sure the survivors, of whom there must be a number
here to-day, want you to be wiser than they were, and are certainly
determined to be wiser next time themselves. If you are to get that
partnership, which, once gained, is to be for mutual benefit, it will
be, I should say, by banding yourselves with these men, not defiantly
but firmly, not for selfish ends but for your country's good. In the
meantime they have one bulwark; they have a General who is befriending
them as I think never, after the fighting was over, has a General
befriended his men before. Perhaps the seemly thing would be for us,
their betters, to elect one of these young survivors of the carnage
to be our Rector. He ought now to know a few things about war that
are worth our hearing. If his theme were the Rector's favourite,
diligence. I should be afraid of his advising a great many of us
to be diligent in sitting still and doing no more harm.
Of course he would put it more suavely than that, though it is not,
I think, by gentleness that you will get your rights; we are dogged
ones at sticking to what we have got, and so will you be at our age.
But avoid calling us ugly names; we may be stubborn and we may be
blunderers, but we love you more than aught else in the world, and
once you have won your partnership we shall all be welcoming you.
I urge you not to use ugly names about anyone. In the war it was
not the fighting men who were distinguished for abuse; as has been
well said, 'Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant.' Never ascribe
to an opponent motives meaner than your own. There may be students
here to-day who have decided this session to go in for immortality,
and would like to know of an easy way of accomplishing it. That is
a way, but not so easy as you think. Go through life without ever
ascribing to your opponents motives meaner than your own. Nothing
so lowers the moral currency; give it up, and be great.
Another sure way to fame is to know what you mean. It is a solemn
thought that almost no one--if he is truly eminent--knows what he
means. Look at the great ones of the earth, the politicians. We
do not discuss what they say, but what they may have meant when they
said it. In 1922 we are all wondering, and so are they, what they
meant in 1914 and afterwards. They are publishing books trying to
find out; the men of action as well as the men of words. There are
exceptions. It is not that our statesmen are 'sugared mouths with
minds therefrae'; many of them are the best men we have got, upright
and anxious, nothing cheaper than to miscall them. The explanation
seems just to be that it is so difficult to know what you mean,
especially when you have become a swell. No longer apparently can
you deal in 'russet yeas and honest kersey noes'; gone for ever is
simplicity, which is as beautiful as the divine plain face of Lamb's
Miss Kelly. Doubts breed suspicions, a dangerous air. Without
suspicion there might have been no war. When you are called to
Downing Street to discuss what you want of your betters with the
Prime Minister he won't be suspicious, not as far as you can see;
but remember the atmosphere of generations you are in, and when he
passes you the toast-rack say to yourselves, if you would be in the
mode, 'Now, I wonder what he means by that.'
Even without striking out in the way I suggest, you are already
disturbing your betters considerably. I sometimes talk this over
with M'Connachie, with whom, as you may guess, circumstances compel
me to pass a good deal of my time. In our talks we agree that we,
your betters, constantly find you forgetting that we are your betters.
Your answer is that the war and other happenings have shown you that
age is not necessarily another name for sapience; that our avoidance
of frankness in life and in the arts is often, but not so often as
you think, a cowardly way of shirking unpalatable truths, and that
you have taken us off our pedestals because we look more natural on
the ground. You who are at the rash age even accuse your elders,
sometimes not without justification, of being more rash than
yourselves. 'If Youth but only knew,' we used to teach you to sing;
but now, just because Youth has been to the war, it wants to change
the next line into 'If Age had only to do.'
In so far as this attitude of yours is merely passive, sullen,
negative, as it mainly is, despairing of our capacity and
anticipating a future of gloom, it is no game for man or woman.
It is certainly the opposite of that for which I plead. Do not
stand aloof, despising, disbelieving, but come in and help--insist
on coming in and helping. After all, we have shown a good deal
of courage; and your part is to add a greater courage to it.
There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you choose to make
them glorious. God's in His Heaven still. So forward, brave
hearts. To what adventures I cannot tell, but I know that your
God is watching to see whether you are adventurous. I know that the
great partnership is only a first step, but I do not know what are
to be the next and the next. The partnership is but a tool; what
are you to do with it? Very little, I warn you, if you are merely
thinking of yourselves; much if what is at the marrow of your
thoughts is a future that even you can scarcely hope to see.
Learn as a beginning how world-shaking situations arise and how they
may be countered. Doubt all your betters who would deny you that
right of partnership. Begin by doubting all such in high places--
except, of course, your professors. But doubt all other professors--
yet not conceitedly, as some do, with their noses in the air; avoid
all such physical risks. If it necessitates your pushing some of us
out of our places, still push; you will find it needs some shoving.
But the things courage can do! The things that even incompetence
can do if it works with singleness of purpose. The war has done at
least one big thing: it has taken spring out of the year. And, this
accomplished, our leading people are amazed to find that the other
seasons are not conducting themselves as usual. The spring of the
year lies buried in the fields of France and elsewhere. By the time
the next eruption comes it may be you who are responsible for it and
your sons who are in the lava. All, perhaps, because this year you
let things slide.
We are a nice and kindly people, but it is already evident that we
are stealing back into the old grooves, seeking cushions for our old
bones, rather than attempting to build up a fairer future. That is
what we mean when we say that the country is settling down. Make
haste, or you will become like us, with only the thing we proudly
call experience to add to your stock, a poor exchange for the
generous feelings that time will take away. We have no intention
of giving you your share. Look around and see how much share Youth
has now that the war is over. You got a handsome share while it
lasted.
I expect we shall beat you; unless your fortitude be doubly girded
by a desire to send a message of cheer to your brothers who fell,
the only message, I believe, for which they crave; they are not
worrying about their Aunt Jane. They want to know if you have
learned wisely from what befell them; if you have, they will be
braced in the feeling that they did not die in vain. Some of them
think they did. They will not take our word for it that they did not.
You are their living image; they know you could not lie to them, but
they distrust our flattery and our cunning faces. To us they have
passed away; but are you who stepped into their heritage only
yesterday, whose books are scarcely cold to their hands, you who
still hear their cries being blown across the links--are you
already relegating them to the shades? The gaps they have left
in this University are among the most honourable of her wounds.
But we are not here to acclaim them. Where they are now, hero is,
I think, a very little word. They call to you to find out in time
the truth about this great game, which your elders play for stakes
and Youth plays for its life.
I do not know whether you are grown a little tired of that word hero,
but I am sure the heroes are. That is the subject of one of our
unfinished plays; M'Connachie is the one who writes the plays.
If any one of you here proposes to be a playwright you can take this
for your own and finish it. The scene is a school, schoolmasters
present, but if you like you could make it a university, professors
present. They are discussing an illuminated scroll about a student
fallen in the war, which they have kindly presented to his parents;
and unexpectedly the parents enter. They are an old pair, backbent,
they have been stalwarts in their day but have now gone small;
they are poor, but not so poor that they could not send their boy
to college. They are in black, not such a rusty black either,
and you may be sure she is the one who knows what to do with his hat.
Their faces are gnarled, I suppose--but I do not need to describe
that pair to Scottish students. They have come to thank the
Senatus for their lovely scroll and to ask them to tear it up.
At first they had been enamoured to read of what a scholar their
son was, how noble and adored by all. But soon a fog settled
over them, for this grand person was not the boy they knew.
He had many a fault well known to them; he was not always so
noble; as a scholar he did no more than scrape through; and he
sometimes made his father rage and his mother grieve. They had
liked to talk such memories as these together, and smile over them,
as if they were bits of him he had left lying about the house.
So thank you kindly, and would you please give them back their boy
by tearing up the scroll? I see nothing else for our dramatist to do.
I think he should ask an alumna of St. Andrews to play the old lady
(indicating Miss Ellen Terry). The loveliest of all young actresses,
the dearest of all old ones; it seems only yesterday that all the men
of imagination proposed to their beloveds in some such frenzied
words as these, 'As I can't get Miss Terry, may I have you?'
This play might become historical as the opening of your propaganda
in the proposed campaign. How to make a practical advance?
The League of Nations is a very fine thing, but it cannot save you,
because it will be run by us. Beware your betters bringing presents.
What is wanted is something run by yourselves. You have more in
common with the Youth of other lands than Youth and Age can ever
have with each other; even the hostile countries sent out many a
son very like ours, from the same sort of homes, the same sort of
universities, who had as little to do as our youth had with the
origin of the great adventure. Can we doubt that many of these
on both sides who have gone over and were once opponents are now
friends? You ought to have a League of Youth of all countries
as your beginning, ready to say to all Governments, 'We will fight
each other but only when we are sure of the necessity.' Are you
equal to your job, you young men? If not, I call upon the
red-gowned women to lead the way. I sound to myself as if I were
advocating a rebellion, though I am really asking for a larger
friendship. Perhaps I may be arrested on leaving the hall. In such
a cause I should think that I had at last proved myself worthy to be
your Rector.
You will have to work harder than ever, but possibly not so much
at the same things; more at modern languages certainly if you are
to discuss that League of Youth with the students of other nations
when they come over to St. Andrews for the Conference. I am far from
taking a side against the classics. I should as soon argue against
your having tops to your heads; that way lie the best tops.
Science, too, has at last come to its own in St. Andrews. It is
the surest means of teaching you how to know what you mean when
you say. So you will have to work harder. Isaak Walton quotes the
saying that doubtless the Almighty could have created a finer fruit
than the strawberry, but that doubtless also He never did. Doubtless
also He could have provided us with better fun than hard work, but
I don't know what it is. To be born poor is probably the next best
thing. The greatest glory that has ever come to me was to be
swallowed up in London, not knowing a soul, with no means of
subsistence, and the fun of working till the stars went out.
To have known any one would have spoilt it. I did not even quite
know the language. I rang for my boots, and they thought I said
a glass of water, so I drank the water and worked on. There was
no food in the cupboard, so I did not need to waste time in eating.
The pangs and agonies when no proof came. How courteously tolerant
was I of the postman without a proof for us; how M'Connachie,
on the other hand, wanted to punch his head. The magic days when
our article appeared in an evening paper. The promptitude with
which I counted the lines to see how much we should get for it.
Then M'Connachie's superb air of dropping it into the gutter.
Oh, to be a free lance of journalism again--that darling jade!
Those were days. Too good to last. Let us be grave. Here comes
a Rector.
But now, on reflection, a dreadful sinking assails me, that this was
not really work. The artistic callings--you remember how Stevenson
thumped them--are merely doing what you are clamorous to be at;
it is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.
My so-called labours were just M'Connachie running away with me again.
Still, I have sometimes worked; for instance, I feel that I am
working at this moment. And the big guns are in the same plight
as the little ones. Carlyle, the king of all rectors, has always
been accepted as the arch-apostle of toil, and has registered his
many woes. But it will not do. Despite sickness, poortith, want
and all, he was grinding all his life at the one job he revelled in.
An extraordinarily happy man, though there is no direct proof that
he thought so.
There must be many men in other callings besides the arts lauded
as hard workers who are merely out for enjoyment. Our Chancellor?
(indicating Lord Haig). If our Chancellor has always a passion
to be a soldier, we must reconsider him as a worker. Even our
Principal? How about the light that burns in our Principal's
room after decent people have gone to bed? If we could climb up
and look in--I should like to do something of that kind for the
last time--should we find him engaged in honest toil, or guiltily
engrossed in chemistry?
You will all fall into one of those two callings, the joyous or the
uncongenial; and one wishes you into the first, though our sympathy,
our esteem, must go rather to the less fortunate, the braver ones
who 'turn their necessity to glorious gain' after they have put away
their dreams. To the others will go the easy prizes of life,
success, which has become a somewhat odious onion nowadays, chiefly
because we so often give the name to the wrong thing. When you
reach the evening of your days you will, I think, see--with, I hope,
becoming cheerfulness--that we are all failures, at least all the
best of us. The greatest Scotsman that ever lived wrote himself
down a failure:
'The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame.
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name.'
Perhaps the saddest lines in poetry, written by a man who could make
things new for the gods themselves.
If you want to avoid being like Burns there are several possible ways.
Thus you might copy us, as we shine forth in our published memoirs,
practically without a flaw. No one so obscure nowadays but that he
can have a book about him. Happy the land that can produce such
subjects for the pen.
But do not put your photograph at all ages into your autobiography.
That may bring you to the ground. 'My Life; and what I have done
with it'; that is the sort of title, but it is the photographs that
give away what you have done with it. Grim things, those portraits;
if you could read the language of them you would often find it
unnecessary to read the book. The face itself, of course,
is still more tell-tale, for it is the record of all one's past
life. There the man stands in the dock, page by page; we ought
to be able to see each chapter of him melting into the next
like the figures in the cinematograph. Even the youngest of you
has got through some chapters already. When you go home for the
next vacation someone is sure to say 'John has changed a little;
I don't quite see in what way, but he has changed.' You remember
they said that last vacation. Perhaps it means that you look less
like your father. Think that out. I could say some nice things
of your betters if I chose.
In youth you tend to look rather frequently into a mirror, not at
all necessarily from vanity. You say to yourself, 'What an
interesting face; I wonder what he is to be up to?' Your elders
do not look into the mirror so often. We know what he has been
up to. As yet there is unfortunately no science of reading other
people's faces; I think a chair for this should be founded
in St. Andrews.
The new professor will need to be a sublime philosopher, and for
obvious reasons he ought to wear spectacles before his senior class.
It will be a gloriously optimistic chair, for he can tell his
students the glowing truth, that what their faces are to be like
presently depends mainly on themselves. Mainly, not altogether--
'I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.'
I found the other day an old letter from Henley that told me of the
circumstances in which he wrote that poem. 'I was a patient,'
he writes, 'in the old infirmary of Edinburgh. I had heard vaguely
of Lister, and went there as a sort of forlorn hope on the chance of
saving my foot. The great surgeon received me, as he did and does
everybody, with the greatest kindness, and for twenty months I lay
in one or other ward of the old place under his care. It was a
desperate business, but he saved my foot, and here I am.' There he
was, ladies and gentlemen, and what he was doing during that
'desperate business' was singing that he was master of his fate.
If you want an example of courage try Henley. Or Stevenson.
I could tell you some stories abut these two, but they would not
be dull enough for a rectorial address. For courage, again,
take Meredith, whose laugh was 'as broad as a thousand beeves at
pasture.' Take, as I think, the greatest figure literature has
still left us, to be added to-day to the roll of St. Andrews'
alumni, though it must be in absence. The pomp and circumstance
of war will pass, and all others now alive may fade from the scene,
but I think the quiet figure of Hardy will live on.