The World’s Tragedy

XVIII PREFACE. THE WRITING OF THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY It has been necessary to sketch this part of my life in order to exhibit the atmosphere which I am bound to connect with Christianity, or at least English Christianity. Certainly the vast majority of English people, of those who are religious at all, belong either to Evangelicalism or Dissent ; and the tyranny of these is nearly if not quite as bad as that of the Plymouth Brethren. I had, however, cut myself adrift from all these things. I had lived among the great men of the earth, and the great mountains of the earth. Pollitt had made a poet of me ; Eckenstein had made a man of me ; Cecil Jones and Allan Bennett had made a God of me. I had forgotten the Plymouth Brethren ! But early in this spring, I went down to Eastbourne to my mother’s house, and some of the old bitterness came back. In her house were two vile old women, hypocrites and slaves to the marrow. The mere meanness and old- maid-ishness of it would have sickened me. These mange- bitten cats ! But there was worse. Only one food was on the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ; and that food cold boi- led Jesus. I stomached it well enough — God’s blood ! I had my belly full of yore and knew to despise it — but in vain I tried to talk of other things. The Boulter blasphemy case was on, and the cold boiled Jesus was so