IV

ETIQUETTE

The old gardener at Versailles was in sad distress. What pains he took with his flower-beds! How patiently he mapped them all out in the evening, and how deftly he executed his own designs in the daytime! How he longed for the summer, that he might feast his eyes upon the perfect patterns and the beautifully blending blossoms! But that joy was never his! For as soon as he had got his rare seed nicely sown, his fragile plants fondly set, and his delicate young cuttings tastefully arranged, the courtiers from the palace trampled them all down, and reduced the poor gardener to tears. Season after season the noblemen and great ladies in their strolls among the beautiful terraces and graceful parterres, ruthlessly destroyed the cunning labour of the old man’s skilful hands. Till at last he could endure it no longer. He would appeal to the king! So right into the august presence of the great Louis the Fourteenth the poor old gardener made his way, and confided all his sorrows and disappointments to his royal master. And the king was sorry for the old man, and ordered little tablets — ‘etiquette’ — to be neatly arranged along the sides of the flower-beds, and a State order was issued commanding all his courtiers to walk carefully within the etiquette. And so the old gardener not only protected the flowers that he loved from the pitiless feet of the high-born vandals, but he enriched our vocabulary with a new and startlingly significant word.

The art of life consists in keeping carefully within the ways marked out by the etiquette. From cannibalism to culture is a long way. And the individual or the race that sets out on that pilgrimage forfeits more and more of freedom at every step. The cannibal can do as he likes, and have what he wants, and go where he pleases. He tramples without restraint on all life’s flower-beds. But as he moves towards civilization he finds himself becoming subject to all sorts of rules and regulations. ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ speak out imperiously. He must not do this, and he must not have that; he must not touch here, and he must not go there. His path is marked out by the etiquette. And the more refined and cultured he becomes, the more those laws subdivide and multiply. He must not only do this thing; but he must do it in a certain way. He must not only go to this place, but he must go at a certain time, and dressed in a certain fashion, and stay for just so long. Cannibalism is freedom — and wretchedness. Civilization is bondage — and delight.

For the beauty of it is that the pleasures of King Louis’ lords and ladies were not at all curtailed, but were really very considerably increased, by the introduction of the etiquette. I can easily imagine that for a month or two, whilst they were chafing under the new restrictions, and whilst as yet the gardener’s precious bulbs were but slowly developing towards their coming glory, the courtiers thought of the old man as a boor, a nuisance, and an enemy to their freedom. Why could they not tread where-ever they liked? But afterwards, when their well-kept promenade was fringed and bordered by the most rare and beautiful and fragrant blossoms, then they blessed the old man as a benefactor, and laughed at their earlier folly. It is a very ancient heresy. Ever since the soul of the first man revolted against the etiquette that marked off one tree in the midst of the garden, the minds of men have rebelled against the royal legends, ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not,’ We abhor, as we saunter through the park, being eternally commanded to ‘Keep off the grass.’ We forget that it is only through the instrumentality of that obnoxious mandate that there is any grass left for us to keep off. The verdant and velvety lawn that charms the eye and soothes the sense is the triumph of the etiquette that sounds like tyranny. The truth is that I never enter into my best inheritance by putting my foot upon it. I more often come into my own by keeping my foot carefully off it. The world is too wisely arranged to play into the hands of the tramplers and the trespassers. The etiquette that subtracts from my freedom multiplies my felicity. Otherwise the cannibal and the criminal would be the happiest men breathing. Things never work out that way.

The courtiers learned in time that it is not necessary to trample upon a thing in order to enjoy it. We are most of us somewhat slow in making that discovery. In The Roadmender Michael Fairless tells us how she came upon a beautiful island out in the river, smothered with a riot of radiant flowers. ‘At the upper end of the field,’ she says, ‘the river provides yet closer sanctuary for the daffodils. Held in its embracing arms lies an island, long and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod Eldorado, glorious in gold from end to end, just a fringe of weeds by the water’s edge, and save for that — all daffodils. A great oak stands at the meadow’s neck, an oak with gnarled and wandering roots, where one may rest, for it is bare of daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing close to the old tree’s side.’ Michael Fairless sat down beside the lonely little daffodil and feasted her eyes on the island in the stream. It was ‘a sea of triumphant, golden heads, tossing blithely as the wind swept down to play with them at his pleasure.’ And as she watched under the oak, and gazed upon the cloth of gold on the island, she exclaimed, ‘It is all mine to have and to hold without severing a single slender stem or harbouring a thought of covetousness; mine, as the whole earth is mine, to appropriate to myself without the burden and bane of worldly possession.’

Now here we have a very beautiful picture. Let us pause to reflect upon some of the questions that its beauty suggests. Why are there only four lonely little daffodils here by the gnarled old oak on the river’s bank? and why is this island out in the stream a tossing sea of gold? The answer is obvious. The water round the island is like the tablets round the flower-beds. It is liquid etiquette. And, so far from impoverishing the strollers on the bank, it greatly enriches them. This girl sitting under the oak gazing on the golden glory of the island tells us that she felt, not like a courtier only, but like a queen. No palace on the planet held a princess so conscious of her wondrous wealth as was she in that delicious hour. It was just because she could not set foot upon her inheritance that it was so splendidly and delightfully her own.

But perhaps the best illustration would have been the case of Richard Jefferies. Everybody who has read Mr. Edward Thomas’s beautiful life of the young English naturalist knows how, in his brave fight with a cruel disease and with grinding poverty, Jefferies was comforted every day by the sight of the wild life around him and the sense of its complete and glorious possession. It was all his; and it was his just because he never tried to touch or tame it. Hear what he says: ‘Every blade of grass was mine,’ he cries exultingly, ‘as if I had myself planted it. All the grasses were my pets: I loved them all. Perhaps that was why I never had a pet, never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird. Why keep pets when every wild hawk that passed over my head was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland. What more beautiful than the sweep and curve of his going through the azure sky? I see the lark chase his mate over the low stone wall of the ploughed field, to battle with his high-crested rival, to balance himself on his trembling wings, outspread a few yards above the earth, and utter that sweet little loving kiss, as it were, of song. Oh, happy, happy days I So beautiful to watch; and all mine!’ It was just because the poor, frail young naturalist kept his feet off the flower-beds, never caged a bird or potted a plant, that all the birds of the forest, and the flowers of the field, seemed so thoroughly and gloriously his own.

Life is all a matter of etiquette. Louis the Fourteenth never supposed for a moment that the dainty little tablets would prevent the courtiers from trampling on the bulbs if they were determined to do so. The tablets indicate the king’s pleasure, that is all. Indeed, that is all that etiquette ever does. It is indicative, not imperative. God does not protect His flower-beds with impregnable fortresses. He makes the way perfectly clear to a man; but if the man has set his heart on outraging the etiquette, there is nothing to prevent him.

God in His mercy hedges our way about with His commandments, His exhortations, His revelations; but it is the easiest thing in the world to break through a hedge. Bunyan’s pilgrims made that discovery.

‘The way was rough, and their feet tender; so the souls of the pilgrims were much discouraged because of the way. So they went to the fence, and saw soft grass in the meadow on the other side.’ “Come, good Hopeful,” said Christian, “and let us get over.” ‘“But how,” replied the suspicious Hopeful, “how if this should lead us out of the way?” ‘“That’s not like,” said Christian.

‘So Hopeful, being persuaded by his fellow, went after him over the stile.’

But the story does not end there. On the soft green grass beyond the fence the pilgrims were captured by Giant Despair, and flung into the dark dungeons of Doubting Castle. And, half a dozen pages further on, Bunyan tells how, sadder and wiser men, after their escape, they climbed back over the fence on to the road they had formerly left.

‘And when they were gone over the stile, they began to contrive what they should do to prevent other pilgrims from falling into the hands of Giant Despair. So they erected a pillar, and engraved upon the side thereof this sentence: “Over this stile is the way to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant Despair, who despiseth the King of the Celestial Country, and seeketh to destroy His holy pilgrims.” Many, therefore, that followed after, read what was written, and escaped the danger.’ It is perfectly plain to me that Bunyan’s fence, and Michael Fairless’s river round the island, and King Louis the Fourteenth’s tablets round the flower-beds, and even the pillar erected by the pilgrims beside the treacherous stile, are all different ways of saying the same thing. It is all a matter of etiquette.

Now, this illustration from Pilgrim’s Progress reminds me. Whilst I was perfectly right in saying just now that God does not protect His flower-beds with frowning forts, I was perfectly wrong if I gave the impression that trespassers will not be prosecuted. The pilgrims quickly discovered that severe penalties lurked in wait for them on the other side of the fence. There is a quaint old text that expresses the truth of this matter about as nicely as it can be stated. ‘Whoso breaketh a hedge,’ said a very wise man once, perhaps not without a wince, as memory reminded him of his own hedge-breaking, ‘whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’ I confess that I never quite understood what this very wise man meant by the serpent until I sat at the feet of a very wise woman. And the very wise woman made plain what the very wise man had left obscure. ‘Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure?’ good Susanna Wesley asked of her son John. ‘Then,’ she added, ‘take this rule. Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things, that is sin to you.’ Sin is, of course, the outraging of etiquette. And here, according to Susanna Wesley, one of the world’s very greatest and very wisest, and very saintliest women, here are the bites of the serpents:

‘The weakening of the reason, the impaired tenderness of the conscience, the obscured sense of God, the lost relish for the spiritual.’

And when this wise and holy woman — the mother of the Wesleys— talks in this strain, she frightens me. She describes these symptoms with such skill that I feel the horrid virus in my own veins. I have outraged the divine etiquette myself. I have trampled on the King’s flower-beds; I have clambered over the stile like Bunyan’s pilgrims; I have broken through the hedge, and the snake has bitten me. I am glad that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and I am thankful that the Saviour left us in no doubt as to the meaning of that weird and wondrous symbol. All the etiquette of the law is designed to keep a man from trampling on the flowers: and all the etiquette of the gospel marks out for contrite trespassers the way that leads up to the Cross.

​F.W. Boreham