little language blomstrer som før (det er jo, på grund af de særlige manuskriptforhold, se side 45 fodnoden, netop kun fra denne «efter krigsperiode, vi kender 11). Vi har set, hvordan Swift i forholdet til Stella fandt tillid og tryghed (II), vi har set, hvordan der, også hvad de rent ydre livs. former angik, herskede så stor intimitet mellem de to, som overhodet kan nås, før man kommer til den grænse, der ligger ved ægteskabslivets begyndelse (penge, boligforhold),' og vi har set, i hvor høj grad deres standpunkt var ens og fælles, hvad intelligensspørgsmål og åndelige interesser angår – vi har kort sagt fået indsyn i et ligevægtigt og frugtbart samliv, der står i skærende modsætning til Vanessa-forbindelsen, der (måske) i første akt mislykkedes, både af ydre og indre grunde, og (ihvertfald) i anden akt opløstes i et uharmonisk og uligevægtigt forhold. Dette forhold måtte, således tænkte vel Swift, for alt i verden ikke bryde ind og forstyrre det eneste virkelig trygge og harmoniske venskab, Swift mødte i sit liv, og da Vanessa tilsidst i sin desperation forsøgte at trodse hans vilje, hvilket var ensbetydende med at få en afgørelse, en ende på pinen, knald eller fald, ved at søge at blande Stella ind i sit og Swifts forhold, da rejste Swift sig i al sin desperate kraft jeg finder ingen bedre lignelse end dyret, der dræber blindt og brutalt for at forsvare den sidste af sit kuld, den sidste rest af sin lykke og knuste med sin åndelige kraft Vanessa så ubændigt, at hun aldrig rejste sig mere, men kort tid efter forlod det liv, der kun havde bragt hende uopfyldte drømme, fortvivlelse og splittelse - Om de få år, der ligger mellem Vanessas død og Stellas bort gang blev mere lykkefyldte og fredelige for Swift end de foregående 10-12, der efter alt at dømme må have spændt hans sjæls kræfter til det yderste, det ved vi intet sikkert om; men det var i de år, at han skrev den første del af sit hovedværk, Gulliver, den del, der trods den dybe misantropi, den giver udtryk for, dog rummer så meget blødt, fint og barnligt, at den endnu den dag i dag tænder smil i barne 1 1 Til det tidligere anførte kan yderligere føjes, at Lord Orrery i sine Remarks on Dr. Swift (1752) siger: «Nothing appeared in their behaviour inconsistent with decorum or beyond the limit of Platonic love», hvorefter han tilføjer: «It would be difficult to prove that they had ever been together without some third person». ansigter og glade glimt i millioner af små øjne og det var i de år, han så og fandt udtryk for det i Stella, som vel til syvende og sidst danner kernepunktet i hele dette underlige forhold: hendes ranke mandige sjæl; det var dèn, der fik hende til at holde fast ved sin sære, kantede, taktløse ven, til at holde ud, skønt anelser om hans forhold til Vanessa må have pint hende, og det var den, der langt mer end hendes skønhed, vid og forstand - vakte hans uforbeholdne beundring og (hvad der er enestående hos Swift) a gtelse for et menneske, så også han holdt fast til det sidste se kund. Det var denne beundring og dybe agtelse, han gav udtryk i det sidste digt, han skrev til hende, mens hun levede: 1 Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind, To this, the Beauty of your Frame! 1 To Stella, visiting me in my Sickness, oct. 1727. Stella døde den 28. jan. 1728. Ebbe Neergård. "I RUDYARD KIPLING AND THE BRITISH 1 EMPIRE shall yet live to see it an Inglishe Nation». These words of Sir Walter Raleigh, used in reference to his creation of Virginia, the first English Colony, breathe the true spirit of the British Imperial ideal. The tremendous foresight and sagacity here shown were but part of the wonderful breadth of vision that characterised the English Renaissance. The period which produced Shakespeare produced also men of the Raleigh stamp: men who could dip into the future and, with more than ordinary human vision, see those new lands across the sea as part and parcel of one great Motherland. Too soon, alas! the vision faded, and, in the troublous times of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth the colonies became, in the eyes of the succeeding governments, just another source of revenue: an inexhaustible treasure chest for the rapacious hands of rulers. One has but to read the clauses of the Navigation Act of 1651, wherein it was laid down that only English ships might carry colonial produce, to see the fell influence of a new commercial spirit usurp ing the ideals of Empire. Throughout the next century this commercial spirit lay uppermost in all that concerned the English colonial policy. These hundred years mark a period of narrow insularity, of niggardly bargaining, that has perhaps never been equaled in the history of the Empire. Letter to Robert Cecil, aug. 21, 1602 in Life Vol II by E. Edwards. But even during this time there were men, brilliant individuals, who dreamed dreams and fought for them. A Clive fighting against the vast hosts of the Indian and French armies makes other instances unnecessary, but the meteoric brilliance of Clive's achievement only serves to emphasise the general depression. It is almost incredible, though nevertheless true, that the English at home had no real idea as to what was happening out in the East at this time. Never has an Empire been won in a more irresponsible way, and it may yet be possible that the Scriptural words on sowing a wind and reaping a hurricane will come to be applied to the English conquest of India. Cecil Rhodes, some two hundred years later, maintained that it was practical common sense and not imagination that led to the creation of an Empire. But practical common sense was the sup reme asset of those eighteenth century islanders, who sat at home in smug complaisance and ignorance, while Clive, the dreamer of dreams, went forth to conquer the great jewel of India. Had Rhodes said that lack of imagination could lose an Empire he had been nearer the truth. Was it not indeed this lack of imagination, this very inability to grasp the wider issue which lost for England her American Colonies? It was that baleful shopkeeper instinct which set out to control a great people on the ignoble principle of a commercial profit and loss account that brought about the schism of the new world from the old. 1 The American secession was a terrible but necessary lesson to the English. It was, to use the words of Mr. Kipling about the Second Boer War, «the Imperial lesson». It was however nearly another century before there were decided and positive results from this lesson. The American war of Inde pendence, which in reality meant the break-down of the first Empire, brought about the fall of the Mercantile system, but for a time no new ideal took its place. The beginning of the colonization of Australia and South Africa is characterised by extreme lack of enthu siasm and exuberance. These countries were almost solely used as dumping grounds for convicts and undesirables from the motherland and there was little or no attempt at a constructive policy. Gradually however some kind of positive effort emerged from the Imperial 1 1 cfr Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations III (1775): To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. slough of despond. The monopoly system was exchanged for that of reciprocity, a substitution which, in the eyes of the English of that day, meant a very generous policy, and it is interesting at this point to reflect how far the English of those times were from visua lizing the possibility of a day coming when those same colonies would protect themselves against English goods by means of hostile tarifs. But the advancement on the road of colonial policy was not limited to fiscal problems. A new science of colonisation, the crea tion of Gibbon Wakefield, began to influence the views of leading English statesmen. One at least of Wakefield's schemes was carried into practical effect. It lay in the selling of land to intending colonists instead of the previous system of concessions. The money so ob tained was placed into a fund for the assistance of colonisation and in the case of Australia, with its predominance of males, money obained from the sale of land was used to send out women settlers from England. It is not however chiefly for practical reforms such as the above that believers in the British Empire have to thank Gibbon Wakefield and his school. It is rather for the new spirit, or better still, for the revival of the old Elizabethan spirit which they brought into the colonial policy. Listen to the bitter and indignant description which one of them, Charles Buller, in Wakerfield's A View of the Art of Colonization (1849) gives of what he calls Mr Mother Country», more precisely the Colonial Office. «In one back room you will find all the Mother Country, which really exercises supremacy and really maintains connection with the vast and widely scattered colo nies of Britain To this place comes the man with a colonial grievance, but after a short conference you will generally see him return with disappointment on his brow, and, quitting the office, wend his lonely way home to despair or perhaps to return to his colony and rebel. These chambers of woe are called the Sighing Rooms and those who recoil from the sight of human suffering should shun the ill-omened precincts. It is however a far cry from this critic's diatribe on the English colonial attitude to Kiplings, splendid laudation in <<The Song of the English». Here is no longer a moribund «Mr Mother Country» but a Mother England, vital, moving and breathing as are the pictures of Mother Earth in the paintings of Edvard Munch in the Aulae of the university of Oslo. But fifty |