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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

The Moralist’s Cloak

The Moralist’s Cloak

A moralist is never a popular man. ‘Why should he think he can tell us what we ought to do? Let him practise first what he preaches.’ And what of a woman moralist, Mrs Be-Done-By-As-You-Did in crinkly black with a face like a temperance reciter. ‘Give her a book on psychology, tell her what she’s missing, pinch her to make her laugh.’ But somewhere at the back of a child’s bad dream she wears another face, not the caricature we have made with soft sly jokes, but the face of the last comfort, the rock in the quagmire. Mr Eliot’s ‘Dying nurse whose only care is not to please,’ with purges to make us whole again. When the many jokes are over she will still be there. Miss Davidson wears the moralist’s cloak with zeal, humility, and great intellectual vigour. She explodes errors with the skill of an accomplished balloon-burster. She is not depressed by a world of evil-doers, though as a Communist turned Christian she has too many harsh words to say about her first teacher, the Party. Her interpretation of the Ten Commandments is positive throughout: a book as refreshing as a thunder-shower on a hot, dry day.

A quotation from Evelyn Underhill’s book will suffice to give the temper of the whole: ‘. . . the complete experience of everything of which we are capable . . . means chaos, not character. We must select in order to achieve; not only develop some faculties at the expense of others.’ A simple statement, the truth of which is made clear to most men only after years of bitter unsuccess. One remembers the reader who picked up St Augustine’s Confessions, looking for some spicy weekend reading, and afterwards complained that there was very little about Augustine and a great deal about God. Similarly in Evelyn Underhill’s book, practically no personal material is set down; the language is as deceptively plain as an insulated wire that carries a thousand volts. It should grow in value with every re-reading.

1955 (119)