You will not agree with me on what I am about to say, for I know you as a stubborn Republican; but I thank fortune that Wilson is going to the Peace Conference. I’ve been mulling over one of my favourite books—it lies beside me as I write—Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, edited by Carlyle, with what Carlyle amusingly calls “Elucidations.” (Carlyle is not very good at “elucidating” anything!) I have heard somewhere or other that this is one of Wilson’s favourite books, and indeed, there is much of the Cromwell in him. With what a grim, covenanting zeal he took up the sword when at last it was forced into his hand! And I have been thinking that what he will say to the Peace Conference will smack strongly of what old Oliver used to say to Parliament in 1657 and 1658—“If we will have Peace without a worm in it, lay we foundations of Justice and Righteousness.” What makes Wilson so irritating to the unthoughtful is that he operates exclusively upon reason, not upon passion. He contradicts Kipling’s famous lines, which apply to most men—
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
In this instance, I think, Reason is going to win. I feel the whole current of the world setting in that direction.
It’s quaint to think of old Woodrow, a kind of Cromwell-Wordsworth, going over to do his bit among the diplomatic shell-craters. What I’m waiting for is the day when he’ll get back into private life and write a book about it. There’s a job, if you like, for a man who might reasonably be supposed to be pretty tired in body and soul! When that book comes out I’ll spend the rest of my life in selling it. I ask nothing better! Speaking of Wordsworth, I’ve often wondered whether Woodrow hasn’t got some poems concealed somewhere among his papers! I’ve always imagined that he may have written poems on the sly. And by the way, you needn’t make fun of me for being so devoted to George Herbert. Do you realize that two of the most familiar quotations in our language come from his pen, viz.:
Wouldst thou both eat thy cake, and have it?
and
Dare to be true: nothing can need a ly;
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.
Forgive this tedious sermon! My mind has been so tumbled up and down this autumn that I am in a queer state of mingled melancholy and exaltation. You know how much I live in and for books. Well, I have a curious feeling, a kind of premonition that there are great books coming out of this welter of human hopes and anguishes, perhaps A book in which the tempest-shaken soul of the race will speak out as it never has before. The Bible, you know, is rather a disappointment: it has never done for humanity what it should have done. I wonder why? Walt Whitman is going to do a great deal, but he is not quite what I mean. There is something coming—I don’t know just what! I thank God I am a bookseller, trafficking in the dreams and beauties and curiosities of humanity rather than some mere huckster of merchandise. But how helpless we all are when we try to tell what goes on within us! I found this in one of Lafcadio Hearn’s letters the other day—I marked the passage for you
Baudelaire has a touching poem about an albatross, which you would like—describing the poet’s soul superb in its own free azure—but helpless, insulted, ugly, clumsy when striving to walk on common earth—or rather, on a deck, where sailors torment it with tobacco pipes, etc.
You can imagine what evenings I have here among my shelves, now the long dark nights are come! Of course until ten o’clock, when I shut up shop, I am constantly interrupted—as I have been during this letter, once to sell a copy of Helen’s Babies and once to sell The Ballad of Reading Gaol, so you can see how varied are my clients’ tastes! But later on, after we have had our evening cocoa and Helen has gone to bed, I prowl about the place, dipping into this and that, fuddling myself with speculation. How clear and bright the stream of the mind flows in those late hours, after all the sediment and floating trash of the day has drained off! Sometimes I seem to coast the very shore of Beauty or Truth, and hear the surf breaking on those shining sands. Then some offshore wind of weariness or prejudice bears me away again. Have you ever come across Andreyev’s Confessions of a Little Man During Great Days? One of the honest books of the War. The Little Man ends his confession thus—
My anger has left me, my sadness returned, and once more the tears flow. Whom can I curse, whom can I judge, when we are all alike unfortunate? Suffering is universal; hands are outstretched to each other, and when they touch … the great solution will come. My heart is aglow, and I stretch out my hand and cry, “Come, let us join hands! I love you, I love you!”
And of course, as soon as one puts one’s self in that frame of mind someone comes along and picks your pocket … I suppose we must teach ourselves to be too proud to mind having our pockets picked!
Did it ever occur to you that the world is really governed by books? The course of this country in the War, for instance, has been largely determined by the books Wilson has read since he first began to think! If we could have a list of the principal books he has read since the War began, how interesting it would be.
Here’s something I’m just copying out to put up on my bulletin board for my customers to ponder. It was written
