TRADITION
By H. V. Lanchester.
Tradition a Tyranny! Why, is it not rather a wholesome corrective to the vagaries of passing fashion? Where should we be without the steadying influence of the established customs leading us gently along from “precedent to precedent” instead of
subject to every whim and crank that might happen to sweep through society? Should we not even be as are the enslaved citizens of the U. S. A., who are permitted neither to think nor to drink? We at any rate can proudly say, such as our forefathers did, so may we, that is, in general terms, for it must be admitted that here and there the demands of an increasingly complex civilisation have chipped bits off our liberty.
All the same, if we examine our habitual conduct we shall find that its numerous illogicalities are due far more to the restrictions we impose on ourselves than to those imposed on us by others. Tradition is a fine thing when it checks crude and ill-considered experiments, but when we come to explore the various directions in which we accept or refuse its guidance, we shall find that these do not facilitate a rational and orderly progress but operate quite as often in kindering beneficial evolution.
The American who is psychologically at the mercy of every wind that blows is, at the same time, in material matters, less hampered than we are by practices that have become obsolete. This difference between America and Europe may give us the clue we are seeking as to when tradition is helpful and when it enslaves.
The test can only be valid if we look within ourselves, for, in so far as our own personalities differ, so will our reactions towards tradition vary. Nevertheless, there is a common measure which may be applied to the majority, and this, broadly speaking, is that traditions are valid as regards the general philosophy of life and conduct, but are injurious when applied to special expositions of this, which are subject to changing conditions either social or material. It is obviously difficult to draw the line between these two aspects, and it would be impossible to secure unanimous acceptance of such a line when drawn; all that is possible is to offer a few examples, among the many that must jump to the mind of those who have either observed or been concerned with the way most of us live and the shell we inhabit.
The perspicacity of Arnold Bennett has made him a critic of the popular obsessions in regard to the home, and one of his notable discoveries was the tendency of the more humble to simulate the superior. The successive stages of the ‘‘villa” is a striking
illustration of this, but perhaps even more artificial was the gradual diminution of the park gate, piers and railings, till these were constructed in front of every six-roomed cottage. These particular obsessions belonged to the Victorian age, but there were many previous ones and we have plenty in our own day.
In the eighteenth century there was the “cottage with the double coach-house “the pride that aped humility” — “and recent developments are more nearly akin to this than to Victorian pomposity, though both are equally derivative and equally irrational. Again, passing to the interior of our homes, what heartsearchings have been caused by attempts to maintain a factitious standard of accommodation and service. Again and again has the architect been disallowed the extra hundred pounds required to make a house comfortable and easy to organise on the grounds — implied, if not expressed — that his clients’ position demanded two — three — or four — servants, and that they might as well have something to do. This day
has also passed, and who will say now that this was not a typical example of the tyranny of tradition?
Another example will come to the architect’s mind when he happens to pass some of the earlier efforts at designing flats for London. Now the essential characteristic in a block of flats is the uniform importance of each floor, and most of those abroad, and nowadays at home also, conform, subject to slight qualifications for the sake of architectural vitality, to this characteristic; while the earlier ones more usually simulated the house, with the ground and first floors given a special emphasis. Here we have escaped, but in general we are still in the toils. Take the longstanding traditions of the shop occupying the ground floor, with the dwelling house over; this dwelling was naturally like any other house, while the substructure became more and more attenuated owing to the demands of the trader for window space. Now that the shop absorbs the upper floors, the scale of lighting and the general plan is similar above and below. The architectural difficulty disappears, but what do we see — a Harrods that looks like something quite other than what it is, and, more recently, a Regent Street composed of ground floor shops with dwellings over in which no one dwells. We may not altogether approve of the scale and conception of Selfridge’s Temple, but at any rate it appears less remote from its purpose than the other examples quoted.
The Building Act of 1894 did not visualise anything other than the built up street façade, although it was obvious, even then, that this was obsolescent as a fulfilment of commercial requirements.
The trouble is largely that, such is the perversity of mankind, the traditions beneficial in their effects are lost sight of, while the valueless ones are still permitted to dominate our actions. These latter are responsible for the lack of organisation in industries and transport, for the obstacles in establishing a sane and wholesome social life, and for numerous other disabilities from which we suffer at the present time. The advocates of the Garden City challenge the obsession that we should continue to attach ourselves to communal aggregations already overgrown, while others may retort that the fault of the great city is not so much its size as its lack of an organic system. In either case it is less the economic difficulty than the heavy hand of tradition that is holding things back. Reorganisation in one form or another would pay for itself within a couple of generations, but, as things are, so they remain, through lack of vision of the possibilities due to the obsession that what exists at the moment is necessarily permanent. No one would be so mad as to imagine that the influence of Tradition could be abolished; even Nature prohibits such a conception of progress or of evolution. When an organism has ceased to function it only disappears by slow degrees. Do we not still possess a rudimentary tail, and, within our foot, is not all the structure prehensile just as it continues in operation in the hand? The hundred per cent. traditionalist could find strong anthropological support for his contentions, but perhaps hardly conclusive ones, as even the most conservative among us would hardly be content with an infinitesimal change during some ten thousand years or so. Organic function follows a time-scale having little relation to social development, and though it is amusing to note the parallelism between the two, it is only in the similarity of method that this is of interest. We eventually discard obsolete traditions; that is inevitable, but sometimes make a great fuss over something comparatively inessential, and at others hang on tenaciously to a practice which should be scrapped as rapidly as possible.
By H. V. Lanchester.
Tradition a Tyranny! Why, is it not rather a wholesome corrective to the vagaries of passing fashion? Where should we be without the steadying influence of the established customs leading us gently along from “precedent to precedent” instead of
subject to every whim and crank that might happen to sweep through society? Should we not even be as are the enslaved citizens of the U. S. A., who are permitted neither to think nor to drink? We at any rate can proudly say, such as our forefathers did, so may we, that is, in general terms, for it must be admitted that here and there the demands of an increasingly complex civilisation have chipped bits off our liberty.
All the same, if we examine our habitual conduct we shall find that its numerous illogicalities are due far more to the restrictions we impose on ourselves than to those imposed on us by others. Tradition is a fine thing when it checks crude and ill-considered experiments, but when we come to explore the various directions in which we accept or refuse its guidance, we shall find that these do not facilitate a rational and orderly progress but operate quite as often in kindering beneficial evolution.
The American who is psychologically at the mercy of every wind that blows is, at the same time, in material matters, less hampered than we are by practices that have become obsolete. This difference between America and Europe may give us the clue we are seeking as to when tradition is helpful and when it enslaves.
The test can only be valid if we look within ourselves, for, in so far as our own personalities differ, so will our reactions towards tradition vary. Nevertheless, there is a common measure which may be applied to the majority, and this, broadly speaking, is that traditions are valid as regards the general philosophy of life and conduct, but are injurious when applied to special expositions of this, which are subject to changing conditions either social or material. It is obviously difficult to draw the line between these two aspects, and it would be impossible to secure unanimous acceptance of such a line when drawn; all that is possible is to offer a few examples, among the many that must jump to the mind of those who have either observed or been concerned with the way most of us live and the shell we inhabit.
The perspicacity of Arnold Bennett has made him a critic of the popular obsessions in regard to the home, and one of his notable discoveries was the tendency of the more humble to simulate the superior. The successive stages of the ‘‘villa” is a striking
illustration of this, but perhaps even more artificial was the gradual diminution of the park gate, piers and railings, till these were constructed in front of every six-roomed cottage. These particular obsessions belonged to the Victorian age, but there were many previous ones and we have plenty in our own day.
In the eighteenth century there was the “cottage with the double coach-house “the pride that aped humility” — “and recent developments are more nearly akin to this than to Victorian pomposity, though both are equally derivative and equally irrational. Again, passing to the interior of our homes, what heartsearchings have been caused by attempts to maintain a factitious standard of accommodation and service. Again and again has the architect been disallowed the extra hundred pounds required to make a house comfortable and easy to organise on the grounds — implied, if not expressed — that his clients’ position demanded two — three — or four — servants, and that they might as well have something to do. This day
has also passed, and who will say now that this was not a typical example of the tyranny of tradition?
Another example will come to the architect’s mind when he happens to pass some of the earlier efforts at designing flats for London. Now the essential characteristic in a block of flats is the uniform importance of each floor, and most of those abroad, and nowadays at home also, conform, subject to slight qualifications for the sake of architectural vitality, to this characteristic; while the earlier ones more usually simulated the house, with the ground and first floors given a special emphasis. Here we have escaped, but in general we are still in the toils. Take the longstanding traditions of the shop occupying the ground floor, with the dwelling house over; this dwelling was naturally like any other house, while the substructure became more and more attenuated owing to the demands of the trader for window space. Now that the shop absorbs the upper floors, the scale of lighting and the general plan is similar above and below. The architectural difficulty disappears, but what do we see — a Harrods that looks like something quite other than what it is, and, more recently, a Regent Street composed of ground floor shops with dwellings over in which no one dwells. We may not altogether approve of the scale and conception of Selfridge’s Temple, but at any rate it appears less remote from its purpose than the other examples quoted.
The Building Act of 1894 did not visualise anything other than the built up street façade, although it was obvious, even then, that this was obsolescent as a fulfilment of commercial requirements.
The trouble is largely that, such is the perversity of mankind, the traditions beneficial in their effects are lost sight of, while the valueless ones are still permitted to dominate our actions. These latter are responsible for the lack of organisation in industries and transport, for the obstacles in establishing a sane and wholesome social life, and for numerous other disabilities from which we suffer at the present time. The advocates of the Garden City challenge the obsession that we should continue to attach ourselves to communal aggregations already overgrown, while others may retort that the fault of the great city is not so much its size as its lack of an organic system. In either case it is less the economic difficulty than the heavy hand of tradition that is holding things back. Reorganisation in one form or another would pay for itself within a couple of generations, but, as things are, so they remain, through lack of vision of the possibilities due to the obsession that what exists at the moment is necessarily permanent. No one would be so mad as to imagine that the influence of Tradition could be abolished; even Nature prohibits such a conception of progress or of evolution. When an organism has ceased to function it only disappears by slow degrees. Do we not still possess a rudimentary tail, and, within our foot, is not all the structure prehensile just as it continues in operation in the hand? The hundred per cent. traditionalist could find strong anthropological support for his contentions, but perhaps hardly conclusive ones, as even the most conservative among us would hardly be content with an infinitesimal change during some ten thousand years or so. Organic function follows a time-scale having little relation to social development, and though it is amusing to note the parallelism between the two, it is only in the similarity of method that this is of interest. We eventually discard obsolete traditions; that is inevitable, but sometimes make a great fuss over something comparatively inessential, and at others hang on tenaciously to a practice which should be scrapped as rapidly as possible.