Chapter 6

FRILLS AND FLOURISHES

HUMANITY is an intricate tangle of contradictions. Civilization, for example, is being swept by a hurricane of sophistication. Our grandfathers and grandmothers would turn in their graves if they could hear and see the things that, every day of our lives, assail our cars and eyes. Yet, side by side with this glorification of sophistication, the period is marked by an extraordinary insistence on simplicity. In architecture, in literature, in music and in the technique of education, as well as in the commonplace matters of food, attire, office and home, there is a violent revolt against frills and flourishes, and a stern demand for the severest vehicles of self-expression.

The old-time novelists made their gallant heroes propose to their lovely heroines in periods so charmingly constructed that they stand as flawless models of British eloquence. The thing is absurd upon the face of it. No sensible woman would believe in the sincerity of a suitor whose tongue could become fluent with polished rhetoric at such a time. When life approximates to sublimity, it invariably expresses itself with simplicity. In the depths of mortal anguish, at the climax of human exultation or in the throes of supreme emotion, we do not employ a grandiloquent phraseology. We talk in monosyllables.

Sophistication, especially in literature, represents the repudiation of sublimity and therefore the annihilation of simplicity, for sublimity and simplicity are inseparable. Great poets, Macaulay argues, are men who have maintained their childish fancy unimpaired. He who would become a Dante, a Shakespeare or a Milton must first become a little child. Robert Louis Stevenson knew what he was doing when, in writing Treasure Island, he discussed every sentence with his small stepson.

Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, was asked if he felt nervous when preaching before Queen Victoria. He smiled at the sheer absurdity of the question. ‘It never occurs to me,’ he replied, ‘to address Her Majesty. Glancing round the Chapel Royal I see, not only the Queen, but the servants, down to the scullery-maid. I then concentrate on the scullery-maid!’ It was probably for this reason that the Bishop became Queen Victoria’s favourite preacher. For it is the simplicities that unite. They captivate the attention of the scullery-maid and win the heart of the Queen. It is the simple things that bind all classes and all ages in one.

Sophistication may bring its votary into line with the vogue of the vicinity and the mode of the moment; but it may, at the same time, sever the link that binds the individual to distant latitudes and remote ages. Two lovers in a shady lane, arms intwined, lost to all the world! It is the timeless idyll of humanity. Adam and Eve walked thus; so did Boaz and Ruth; so did Abélard and Héloïse; do did Romeo and Juliet; so did Gabriel and Evangeline. But two lovers on a motor-cycle; he in the saddle and she riding pillion! The motor-cycle may be the last word in mechanical ingenuity, but it breaks the bond between these two lovers and all the lovers of the ages.

It is the simplicities that endure. In a classical and memorable passage of his Decline and Fall, Gibbon describes the triumph of the most majestic masterpieces of Roman architecture. Huns, Goths, Turks and Vandals had done their worst. Yet when, like a storm that had spent its fury, this frenzy of annihilation had passed, the monumental simplicities of the noble city remained unimpaired. The fretwork and the fancywork, the delicate carving and the dainty embellishments, had fallen before the savagery of the invaders; but the towering columns, the colossal arches and the stately pillars defied alike the teeth of time and the malice of the barbarians.

All this furnishes an eloquent demonstration of one of the most profound truths that ever fell on human ears- ‘Now abideth faith, hope, love.’ Inventions may come and go; fashions may wax and wane; innovations may first startle and then weary us; but these commanding simplicities-faith and hope and love-endure though all things else depart; and, enduring, they bind in noble comradeship all who, the world over and the ages through, have come to recognize their worth.

Dr. F. W. Boreham