I traced at length as belonging to about six small
children. Their father was still working in the
fields, but their mother rose when I entered.
She smiled, but she and all the rest spoke some rude
language, Flamand, I suppose; so that we had to be
kind to each other by signs. She fetched me beer,
and pointed out my way with her finger; and I drew
a picture to please the children; and as it was a
picture of two men hitting each other with swords,
it pleased them very much. Then I gave a Belgian
penny to each child, for as I said on chance in French,
“It must be that we have the economic equality.”
But they had never heard of economic equality, while
all Battersea workmen have heard of economic equality,
though it is true that they haven’t got it.
I found my way back to the city, and some time afterwards
I actually saw in the street my two men talking, no
doubt still saying, one that Science had changed all
in Humanity, and the other that Humanity was now pushing
the wings of the purely intellectual. But for
me Humanity was hooked on to an accidental picture.
I thought of a low and lonely house in the flats, behind
a veil or film of slight trees, a man breaking the
ground as men have broken from the first morning,
and a huge grey horse champing his food within a foot
of a child’s head, as in the stable where Christ
was born.
The Little Birds Who Won’t Sing
On my last morning on the Flemish coast, when I knew
that in a few hours I should be in England, my eye
fell upon one of the details of Gothic carving of
which Flanders is full. I do not know whether
the thing is old, though it was certainly knocked
about and indecipherable, but at least it was certainly
in the style and tradition of the early Middle Ages.
It seemed to represent men bending themselves (not
to say twisting themselves) to certain primary employments.
Some seemed to be sailors tugging at ropes; others,
I think, were reaping; others were energetically pouring
something into something else. This is entirely
characteristic of the pictures and carvings of the
early thirteenth century, perhaps the most purely
vigorous time in all history. The great Greeks
preferred to carve their gods and heroes doing nothing.
Splendid and philosophic as their composure is there
is always about it something that marks the master
of many slaves. But if there was one thing the
early mediaevals liked it was representing people
doing something— hunting or hawking, or
rowing boats, or treading grapes, or making shoes,
or cooking something in a pot. “Quicquid
agunt homines, votum, timor, ira voluptas.”
(I quote from memory.) The Middle Ages is full of
that spirit in all its monuments and manuscripts.
Chaucer retains it in his jolly insistence on everybody’s
type of trade and toil. It was the earliest and
youngest resurrection of Europe, the time when social
order was strengthening, but had not yet become oppressive;
