MARGINAL COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
GOD knows it would be magnificent to be a dictator. To look round a picture gallery and say " I don't like those ones. Remove them "—this we can all say, but with a peevishness how frail and ineffectual ! It is only given to dictators to banish their artistic bugbears with a gesture of the hand, as we others, contemptuously turning a knob, purge the air about us of unpleasing sounds. Even so, we cannot purge the air in which others listen ; nor can we order to be sterilised or shut up those who produced the sounds. To have a whole jazz band, crooners and all, not merely silenced but sterilised, or gaoled as criminal imbeciles (better both)—how delightful this would be ! To reflect on the baulked longings of the lowbrow, the philistine, all the great vulgar, for their jazz—what a solace for the spiteful highbrow as he listened to his Beethoven and Bach ! As to pictures and books, none was ever such a yes-man that he did not consider all libraries and picture- galleries to need his purging ; but fortunate is he who can gratify his desires outside his own dwelling. Of such have been emperors, popes and kings, presidents of South American republics, Mexican generals, and modern dictators. A good time, it is clear, has been had by all these arbiters.
It is a fruitful day-dream. If one were arbiter in Great Britain, of what would one not get rid ? The industrial towns, the greater part of London, most of the houses along the new arterial roads, all nineteenth-century Gothic churches, practically all Nonconformist chapels, most police stations, and considerable selections from our street statuary—but, if one is to begin on buildings, there is no end ; no doubt the forthcoming bombing raids of which we hear so much will settle all that, though with the somewhat dull and heavy-handed indiscrimination characteristic of militarism in action. As to pictures, to imagine oneself wielding the winnowing-fan in the National Gallery, the Tate, the Royal Academy, and other exhibitions, is to feel, for the first time, sympathy with Herr Hitler in his pleasures. One would expel different pictures ; but to expel any pictures must be infinitely charming. Turned loose among music and books (or, as some prefer to call them, among numbers and titles) what pleasure to sort and sift, reject and retain ! (Are there, by the way, any musical compositions which should not be called numbers ? A book, I understand, is always a title. I like these names, and have begun to use them myself.) Anyhow, all jazz and Elgar would go, and most modern British music.
One trouble about arbiters is that few people, even among dictators, are versatile enough. Training and taste being extremely departmental, you will rarely find in the same person good judgement in numbers, titles, and pictures, let alone buildings. There are those with a very pretty literary taste who like vulgar music ; and musical highbrows who like vulgar literature ; in fact, I have heard the view that really good ears for music and poetry are practically incompatible, though adequate training in either may produce something that serves. It is said that Herr Hitler has good musical taste, though no other.
Since writing this I- have walked in Hyde Park and heard a speaker praising General Franco for a good Christian, abusing his Spanish enemies as a red rabble of diabolical scoundrels and thugs (rather oddly, as he also said that he admired the Spanish people) and calling Mr. Eden " a con- temptible little cur," for aiming at neutrality in a struggle between Right and Red, God and the Devil. An interesting reversal of the usual abuse of the Foreign Secretary for his supposed Francophilism. But are Hyde Park speakers privileged, or are politicians fair game, or is " contemptible cur " less slanderous than, say, " man of straw," which is said to be good for a large sum ? However, I suppose soap-box orators know how far they can go.
Previous page
