Produced by Ron Swanson
By Agnes Repplier
COUNTER-CURRENTS.
AMERICANS AND OTHERS.
A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER ESSAYS.
IN OUR CONVENT DAYS.
COMPROMISES.
THE FIRESIDE SPHINX. With 4 full-page and 17 text illustrations by
Miss E. BONSALL.
BOOKS AND MEN.
POINTS OF VIEW.
ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS.
ESSAYS IN MINIATURE.
A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside
Library for Young People.
THE SAME. _Holiday Edition_.
VARIA.
AMERICANS AND OTHERS
BY
AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY AGNES REPPLIER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1912_
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Note
Five of the essays in this volume appear in print for the first time.
Others have been published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Century
Magazine_, _Harper's Bazar_, and the _Catholic World_.
Contents
A Question of Politeness
The Mission of Humour
Goodness and Gayety
The Nervous Strain
The Girl Graduate
The Estranging Sea
Travellers' Tales
The Chill of Enthusiasm
The Temptation of Eve
"The Greatest of These is Charity"
The Customary Correspondent
The Benefactor
The Condescension of Borrowers
The Grocer's Cat
AMERICANS AND OTHERS
A Question of Politeness
"La politesse de l'esprit consiste a penser des choses honnetes et
delicates."
A great deal has been said and written during the past few years on
the subject of American manners, and the consensus of opinion is,
on the whole, unfavourable. We have been told, more in sorrow than
in anger, that we are not a polite people; and our critics have cast
about them for causes which may be held responsible for such a
universal and lamentable result. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, for example,
is by way of thinking that the fault lies in the sudden expansion
of wealth, in the intrusion into the social world of people who fail
to understand its requirements, and in the universal "spoiling" of
American children. He contrasts the South of his childhood, that
wonderful "South before the war," which looms vaguely, but very
grandly, through a half-century's haze, with the New York of to-day,
which, alas! has nothing to soften its outlines. A more censorious
critic in the "Atlantic Monthly" has also stated explicitly that for
true consideration and courtliness we must hark back to certain old
gentlewomen of ante-bellum days. "None of us born since the Civil
War approach them in respect to some fine, nameless quality that
gives them charm and atmosphere." It would seem, then, that the war,
with its great emotions and its sustained heroism, imbued us with
national life at the expense of our national manners.
I wonder if this kind of criticism does not err by comparing the many
with the few, the general with the exceptional. I wonder if the
deficiencies of an imperfect civilization can be accounted for along
such obvious lines. The self-absorption of youth which Mrs. Comer
deprecates, the self-absorption of a crowd which offends Mr. Page,
are human, not American. The nature of youth and the nature of crowds
have not changed essentially since the Civil War, nor since the Punic
Wars. Granted that the tired and hungry citizens of New York,
jostling one another in their efforts to board a homeward train,
present an unlovely spectacle; but do they, as Mr. Page affirms,
reveal "such sheer and primal brutality as can be found nowhere else
in the world where men and women are together?" Crowds will jostle,
and have always jostled, since men first clustered in communities.
Read Theocritus. The hurrying Syracusans--third century
B.C.--"rushed like a herd of swine," and rent in twain Praxinoe's
muslin veil. Look at Hogarth. The whole fun of an eighteenth-century
English crowd consisted in snatching off some unfortunate's wig, or
toppling him over into the gutter. The truth is we sin against
civilization when we consent to flatten ourselves against our
neighbours. The experience of the world has shown conclusively that
a few inches more or less of breathing space make all the difference
between a self-respecting citizen and a savage.
As for youth,--ah, who shall be brave enough, who has ever been brave
enough, to defend the rising generation? Who has ever looked with
content upon the young, save only Plato, and he lived in an age of
symmetry and order which we can hardly hope to reproduce. The
shortcomings of youth are so pitilessly, so glaringly apparent. Not
a rag to cover them from the discerning eye. And what a veil has fallen
between us and the years of _our_ offending. There is no illusion
so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with
complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing
of recollections with realities. How loud and shrill the voice of
the girl at our elbow. How soft the voice which from the far past
breathes its gentle echo in our ears. How bouncing the vigorous young
creatures who surround us, treading us under foot in the certainty
of their self-assurance. How sweet and reasonable the pale shadows
who smile--we think appealingly--from some dim corner of our
memories. There is a passage in the diary of Louisa Gurney, a
carefully reared little Quaker girl of good family and estate, which
is dated 1796, and which runs thus:--
"I was in a very playing mood to-day, and thoroughly enjoyed being
foolish, and tried to be as rude to everybody as I could. We went
on the highroad for the purpose of being rude to the folks that passed.
I do think being rude is most pleasant sometimes."
Let us hope that the grown-up Louisa Gurney, whenever she felt
disposed to cavil at the imperfections of the rising generation of
1840 or 1850, re-read these illuminating words, and softened her
judgment accordingly.
New York has been called the most insolent city in the world. To make
or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of
contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no
significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for
themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for
discourtesy. The Italians say "as rude as a Florentine"; and even
the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been
set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach. The Roman, with the
civilization of the world at his back, is naturally, one might say
inevitably, polite. His is that serious and simple dignity which
befits his high inheritance. But the Venetian and the Sienese have
also a grave courtesy of bearing, compared with which the manners
of the Florentine seem needlessly abrupt. We can no more account for
this than we can account for the churlishness of the Vaudois, who
is always at some pains to be rude, and the gentleness of his
neighbour, the Valaisan, to whom breeding is a birthright, born, it
would seem, of generosity of heart, and a scorn of ignoble things.
But such generalizations, at all times perilous, become impossible
in the changing currents of American life, which has as yet no quality
of permanence. The delicate old tests fail to adjust themselves to
our needs. Mr. Page is right theoretically when he says that the
treatment of a servant or of a subordinate is an infallible criterion
of manners, and when he rebukes the "arrogance" of wealthy women to
"their hapless sisters of toil." But the truth is that our hapless
sisters of toil have things pretty much their own way in a country
which is still broadly prosperous and democratic, and our treatment
of them is tempered by a selfish consideration for our own comfort
and convenience. If they are toiling as domestic servants,--a field
in which the demand exceeds the supply,--they hold the key to the
situation; it is sheer foolhardiness to be arrogant to a cook.
Dressmakers and milliners are not humbly seeking for patronage;
theirs is the assured position of people who can give the world what
the world asks; and as for saleswomen, a class upon whom much
sentimental sympathy is lavished year by year, their heart-whole
superciliousness to the poor shopper, especially if she chance to
be a housewife striving nervously to make a few dollars cover her
family needs, is wantonly and detestably unkind. It is not with us
as it was in the England of Lamb's day, and the quality of breeding
is shown in a well-practised restraint rather than in a sweet and
somewhat lofty consideration.
Eliminating all the more obvious features of criticism, as throwing
no light upon the subject, we come to the consideration of three
points,--the domestic, the official, and the social manners of a
nation which has been roundly accused of degenerating from the high
standard of former years, of those gracious and beautiful years which
few of us have the good fortune to remember. On the first count, I
believe that a candid and careful observation will result in a
verdict of acquittal. Foreigners, Englishmen and Englishwomen
especially, who visit our shores, are impressed with the politeness
of Americans in their own households. That fine old Saxon point of
view, "What is the good of a family, if one cannot be disagreeable
in the bosom of it?" has been modified by the simple circumstance
that the family bosom is no longer a fixed and permanent asylum. The
disintegration of the home may be a lamentable feature of modern
life; but since it has dawned upon our minds that adult members of
a family need not necessarily live together if they prefer to live
apart, the strain of domesticity has been reduced to the limits of
endurance. We have gained in serenity what we have lost in
self-discipline by this easy achievement of an independence which,
fifty years ago, would have been deemed pure licence. I can remember
that, when I was a little girl, two of our neighbours, a widowed
mother and a widowed daughter, scandalized all their friends by
living in two large comfortable houses, a stone's throw apart,
instead of under one roof as became their relationship; and the fact
that they loved each other dearly and peacefully in no way lessened
their transgression. Had they shared their home, and bickered day
and night, that would have been considered unfortunate but
"natural."
If the discipline of family life makes for law and order, for the
subordination of parts to the whole, and for the prompt recognition
of authority; if, in other words, it makes, as in the days of Rome,
for citizenship, the rescue of the individual makes for social
intercourse, for that temperate and reasoned attitude which begets
courtesy. The modern mother may lack influence and authority; but
she speaks more urbanely to her children than her mother spoke to
her. The modern child is seldom respectful, but he is often polite,
with a politeness which owes nothing to intimidation. The harsh and
wearisome habit of contradiction, which used to be esteemed a family
privilege, has been softened to a judicious dissent. In my youth I
knew several old gentlemen who might, on their death-beds, have laid
their hands upon their hearts, and have sworn that never in their
whole lives had they permitted any statement, however insignificant,
to pass uncontradicted in their presence. They were authoritative
old gentlemen, kind husbands after their fashion, and careful
fathers; but conversation at their dinner-tables was not for human
delight.
The manners of American officials have been discussed with more or
less acrimony, and always from the standpoint of personal experience.
The Custom-House is the centre of attack, and critics for the most
part agree that the men whose business it is to "hold up" returning
citizens perform their ungracious task ungraciously. Theirs is
rather the attitude of the detective dealing with suspected
criminals than the attitude of the public servant impersonally
obeying orders. It is true that even on the New York docks one may
encounter civility and kindness. There are people who assure us that
they have never encountered anything else; but then there are people
who would have us believe that always and under all circumstances
they meet with the most distinguished consideration. They intimate
that there is _that_ in their own demeanour which makes rudeness to
them an impossibility.
More candid souls find it hard to account for the crudity of our
intercourse, not with officials only, but with the vast world which
lies outside our narrow circle of associates. We have no human
relations where we have no social relations; we are awkward and
constrained in our recognition of the unfamiliar; and this
awkwardness encumbers us in the ordinary routine of life. A policeman
who has been long on one beat, and who has learned to know either
the householders or the business men of his locality, is wont to be
the most friendly of mortals. There is something almost pathetic in
the value he places upon human relationship, even of a very casual
order. A conductor on a local train who has grown familiar with scores
of passengers is no longer a ticket-punching, station-shouting
automaton. He bears himself in friendly fashion towards all
travellers, because he has established with some of them a rational
foothold of communication. But the official who sells tickets to a
hurrying crowd, or who snaps out a few tart words at a bureau of
information, or who guards a gate through which men and women are
pushing with senseless haste, is clad in an armour of incivility.
He is wantonly rude to foreigners, whose helplessness should make
some appeal to his humanity. I have seen a gatekeeper at Jersey City
take by the shoulders a poor German, whose ticket called for another
train, and shove him roughly out of the way, without a word of
explanation. The man, too bewildered for resentment, rejoined his
wife to whom he had said good-bye, and the two anxious, puzzled
creatures stood whispering together as the throng swept callously
past them. It was a painful spectacle, a lapse from the well-ordered
decencies of civilization.
For to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offence,
it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our
path. An Englishwoman once said to Mr. Whistler that the politeness
of the French was "all on the surface," to which the artist made
reply: "And a very good place for it to be." It is this sweet surface
politeness, costing so little, counting for so much, which smooths
the roughness out of life. "The classic quality of the French
nation," says Mr. Henry James, "is sociability; a sociability which
operates in France, as it never does in England, from below upward.
Your waiter utters a greeting because, after all, something human
within him prompts him. His instinct bids him say something, and his
taste recommends that it should be agreeable."
This combination of instinct and taste--which happily is not
confined to the French, nor to waiters--produces some admirable
results, results out of all proportion to the slightness of the means
employed. It often takes but a word, a gesture, to indicate the
delicate process of adjustment. A few summers ago I was drinking tea
with friends in the gardens of the Hotel Faloria, at Cortina. At a
table near us sat two Englishmen, three Englishwomen, and an Austrian,
the wife of a Viennese councillor. They talked with animation and
in engaging accents. After a little while they arose and strolled
back to the hotel. The Englishmen, as they passed our table, stared
hard at two young girls who were of our party, stared as deliberately
and with as much freedom as if the children had been on a London
music-hall stage. The Englishwomen passed us as though we had been
invisible. They had so completely the air of seeing nothing in our
chairs that I felt myself a phantom, a ghost like Banquo's, with no
guilty eye to discern my presence at the table. Lastly came the
Austrian, who had paused to speak to a servant, and, as _she_ passed,
she gave us a fleeting smile and a slight bow, the mere shadow of
a curtsey, acknowledging our presence as human beings, to whom some
measure of recognition was due.
It was such a little thing, so lightly done, so eloquent of perfect
self-possession, and the impression it made upon six admiring
Americans was a permanent one. We fell to asking ourselves--being
honestly conscious of constraint--how each one of us would have
behaved in the Austrian lady's place, whether or not that act of
simple and sincere politeness would have been just as easy for us.
Then I called to mind one summer morning in New England, when I sat
on a friend's piazza, waiting idly for the arrival of the Sunday
papers. A decent-looking man, with a pretty and over-dressed girl
by his side, drove up the avenue, tossed the packet of papers at our
feet, and drove away again. He had not said even a bare "Good
morning." My kind and courteous host had offered no word of greeting.
The girl had turned her head to stare at me, but had not spoken. Struck
by the ungraciousness of the whole episode, I asked, "Is he a stranger
in these parts?"
"No," said my friend. "He has brought the Sunday papers all summer.
That is his daughter with him."
All summer, and no human relations, not enough to prompt a friendly
word, had been established between the man who served and the man
who was served. None of the obvious criticisms passed upon American
manners can explain the crudity of such a situation. It was certainly
not a case of arrogance towards a hapless brother of toil. My friend
probably toiled much harder than the paperman, and was the least
arrogant of mortals. Indeed, all arrogance of bearing lay
conspicuously on the paperman's part. Why, after all, should not his
instinct, like the instinct of the French waiter, have bidden him
say something; why should not his taste have recommended that the
something be agreeable? And then, again, why should not my friend,
in whom social constraint was unpardonable, have placed his finer
instincts at the service of a fellow creature? We must probe to the
depths of our civilization before we can understand and deplore the
limitations which make it difficult for us to approach one another
with mental ease and security. We have yet to learn that the amenities
of life stand for its responsibilities, and translate them into
action. They express externally the fundamental relations which
ought to exist between men. "All the distinctions, so delicate and
sometimes so complicated, which belong to good breeding," says M.
Rondalet in "La Reforme Sociale," "answer to a profound unconscious
analysis of the duties we owe to one another."
There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their
manifest insincerity. They cannot be brought to believe that the
expressions of unfelt pleasure or regret with which we accept or
decline invitations, the little affectionate phrases which begin and
end our letters, the agreeable formalities which have accumulated
around the simplest actions of life, are beneficent influences upon
character, promoting gentleness of spirit. The Quakers, as we know,
made a mighty stand against verbal insincerities, with one striking
exception,--the use of the word "Friend." They said and believed that
this word represented their attitude towards humanity, their spirit
of universal tolerance and brotherhood. But if to call oneself a
"Friend" is to emphasize one's amicable relations towards one's
neighbour, to call one's neighbour "Friend" is to imply that he
returns this affectionate regard, which is often an unwarranted
assumption. It is better and more logical to accept _all_ the polite
phraseology which facilitates intercourse, and contributes to the
sweetness of life. If we discarded the formal falsehoods which are
the currency of conversation, we should not be one step nearer the
vital things of truth.
For to be sincere with ourselves is better and harder than to be
painstakingly accurate with others. A man may be cruelly candid to
his associates, and a cowardly hypocrite to himself. He may handle
his friend harshly, and himself with velvet gloves. He may never tell
the fragment of a lie, and never think the whole truth. He may wound
the pride and hurt the feelings of all with whom he comes in contact,
and never give his own soul the benefit of one good knockdown blow.
The connection which has been established between rudeness and
probity on the one hand, and politeness and insincerity on the other,
is based upon an imperfect knowledge of human nature.
"So rugged was he that we thought him just,
So churlish was he that we deemed him true."
"It is better to hold back a truth," said Saint Francis de Sales,
"than to speak it ungraciously."
There are times doubtless when candour goes straight to its goal,
and courtesy misses the mark. Mr. John Stuart Mill was once asked
upon the hustings whether or not he had ever said that the English
working-classes were mostly liars. He answered shortly, "I
did!"--and the unexpected reply was greeted with loud applause. Mr.
Mill was wont to quote this incident as proof of the value which
Englishmen set upon plain speaking. They do prize it, and they prize
the courage which defies their bullying. But then the remark was,
after all, a generalization. We can bear hearing disagreeable truths
spoken to a crowd or to a congregation--causticity has always been
popular in preachers--because there are other heads than our own upon
which to fit the cap.
The brutalities of candour, the pestilent wit which blights whatever
it touches, are not distinctively American. It is because we are a
humorous rather than a witty people that we laugh for the most part
with, and not at, our fellow creatures. Indeed, judged by the
unpleasant things we might say and do not say, we should be esteemed
polite. English memoirs teem with anecdotes which appear to us
unpardonable. Why should Lady Holland have been permitted to wound
the susceptibilities of all with whom she came in contact? When Moore
tells us that she said to him, "This book of yours" (the "Life of
Sheridan") "will be dull, I fear;" and to Lord Porchester, "I am sorry
to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can't you suppress it?" we
do not find these remarks to be any more clever than considerate.
They belong to the category of the monumentally uncouth.
Why should Mr. Abraham Hayward have felt it his duty (he put it that
way) to tell Mr. Frederick Locker that the "London Lyrics" were
"overrated"? "I have suspected this," comments the poet, whose least
noticeable characteristic was vanity; "but I was none the less sorry
to hear him say so." Landor's reply to a lady who accused him of
speaking of her with unkindness, "Madame, I have wasted my life in
defending you!" was pardonable as a repartee. It was the exasperated
utterance of self-defence; and there is a distinction to be drawn
between the word which is flung without provocation, and the word
which is the speaker's last resource. When "Bobus" Smith told
Talleyrand that his mother had been a beautiful woman, and Talleyrand
replied, "_C'etait donc Monsieur votre pere qui n'etait pas bien_,"
we hold the witticism to have been cruel because unjustifiable. A
man should be privileged to say his mother was beautiful, without
inviting such a very obvious sarcasm. But when Madame de Stael
pestered Talleyrand to say what he would do if he saw her and Madame
Recamier drowning, the immortal answer, "_Madame de Stael sait tant
de choses, que sans doute elle peut nager_," seems as kind as the
circumstances warranted. "Corinne's" vanity was of the hungry type,
which, crying perpetually for bread, was often fed with stones.
It has been well said that the difference between a man's habitual
rudeness and habitual politeness is probably as great a difference
as he will ever be able to make in the sum of human happiness; and
the arithmetic of life consists in adding to, or subtracting from,
the pleasurable moments of mortality. Neither is it worth while to
draw fine distinctions between pleasure and happiness. If we are
indifferent to the pleasures of our fellow creatures, it will not
take us long to be indifferent to their happiness. We do not grow
generous by ceasing to be considerate.
As a matter of fact, the perpetual surrender which politeness
dictates cuts down to a reasonable figure the sum total of our
selfishness. To listen when we are bored, to talk when we are listless,
to stand when we are tired, to praise when we are indifferent, to
accept the companionship of a stupid acquaintance when we might, at
the expense of politeness, escape to a clever friend, to endure with
smiling composure the near presence of people who are distasteful
to us,--these things, and many like them, brace the sinews of our
souls. They set a fine and delicate standard for common intercourse.
They discipline us for the good of the community.
We cannot ring the bells backward, blot out the Civil War, and
exchange the speed of modern life for the slumberous dignity of the
Golden Age,--an age whose gilding brightens as we leave it shimmering
in the distance. But even under conditions which have the
disadvantage of existing, the American is not without gentleness of
speech and spirit. He is not always in a hurry. He is not always
elbowing his way, or quivering with ill-bred impatience. Turn to him
for help in a crowd, and feel the bright sureness of his response.
Watch him under ordinary conditions, and observe his large measure
of forbearance with the social deficiencies of his neighbour. Like
Steele, he deems it humanity to laugh at an indifferent jest, and
he has thereby earned for himself the reputation of being readily
diverted. If he lacks the urbanities which embellish conversation,
he is correspondingly free from the brutalities which degrade it.
If his instinct does not prompt him to say something agreeable, it
saves him from being wantonly unkind. Plain truths may be salutary;
but unworthy truths are those which are destitute of any spiritual
quality, which are not noble in themselves, and which are not nobly
spoken; which may be trusted to offend, and which have never been
known to illuminate. It is not for such asperities that we have
perfected through the ages the priceless gift of language, that we
seek to meet one another in the pleasant comradeship of life.
The Mission of Humour
"Laughter is my object: 'tis a property
In man, essential to his reason."
THOMAS RANDOLPH, _The Muses' Looking-Glass_.
American humour is the pride of American hearts. It is held to
be our splendid national characteristic, which we flaunt in the faces
of other nations, conceiving them to have been less favoured by
Providence. Just as the most effective way to disparage an author
or an acquaintance--and we have often occasion to disparage both--is
to say that he lacks a sense of humour, so the most effective
criticism we can pass upon a nation is to deny it this valuable
quality. American critics have written the most charming things
about the keenness of American speech, the breadth and insight of
American drollery, the electric current in American veins; and we,
reading these pleasant felicitations, are wont to thank God with
greater fervour than the occasion demands that we are more merry and
wise than our neighbours. Mr. Brander Matthews, for example, has told
us that there are newspaper writers in New York who have cultivated
a wit, "not unlike Voltaire's." He mistrusts this wit because he
finds it "corroding and disintegrating"; but he makes the comparison
with that casual assurance which is a feature of American criticism.
Indeed, our delight in our own humour has tempted us to overrate both
its literary value and its corrective qualities. We are never so apt
to lose our sense of proportion as when we consider those beloved
writers whom we hold to be humourists because they have made us laugh.
It may be conceded that, as a people, we have an abiding and somewhat
disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone
to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth
when it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and
we habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration,
accepting, perhaps unconsciously, Hazlitt's verdict: "Lying is a
species of wit, and shows spirit and invention." It is true also that
no adequate provision is made in this country for the defective but
valuable class without humour, which in England is exceedingly well
cared for. American letters, American journalism, and American
speech are so coloured by pleasantries, so accentuated by ridicule,
that the silent and stodgy men, who are apt to represent a nation's
real strength, hardly know where to turn for a little saving dulness.
A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it
possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff
with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit.
Just as the French monarchy under Louis the Fourteenth was wittily
defined as despotism tempered by epigram, so the United States have
been described as a free republic fettered by jokes, and the taunt
conveys a half-truth which it is worth our while to consider.
Now there are many who affirm that the humourist's point of view is,
on the whole, the fairest from which the world can be judged. It is
equally remote from the misleading side-lights of the pessimist and
from the wilful blindness of the optimist. It sees things with
uncompromising clearness, but it judges of them with tolerance and
good temper. Moreover, a sense of the ridiculous is a sound
preservative of social virtues. It places a proper emphasis on the
judgments of our associates, it saves us from pitfalls of vanity and
self-assurance, it lays the basis of that propriety and decorum of
conduct upon which is founded the charm of intercourse among equals.
And what it does for us individually, it does for us collectively.
Our national apprehension of a jest fosters whatever grace of modesty
we have to show. We dare not inflate ourselves as superbly as we
should like to do, because our genial countrymen stand ever ready
to prick us into sudden collapse. "It is the laugh we enjoy at our
own expense which betrays us to the rest of the world."
Perhaps we laugh too readily. Perhaps we are sometimes amused when
we ought to be angry. Perhaps we jest when it is our plain duty to
reform. Here lies the danger of our national light-mindedness,--for
it is seldom light-heartedness; we are no whit more light-hearted
than our neighbours. A carping English critic has declared that
American humour consists in speaking of hideous things with levity;
and while so harsh a charge is necessarily unjust, it makes clear
one abiding difference between the nations. An Englishman never
laughs--except officially in "Punch"--over any form of political
degradation. He is not in the least amused by jobbery, by bad service,
by broken pledges. The seamy side of civilized life is not to him
a subject for sympathetic mirth. He can pity the stupidity which does
not perceive that it is cheated and betrayed; but penetration allied
to indifference awakens his wondering contempt. "If you think it
amusing to be imposed on," an Englishwoman once said to me, "you need
never be at a loss for a joke."
In good truth, we know what a man is like by the things he finds
laughable, we gauge both his understanding and his culture by his
sense of the becoming and of the absurd. If the capacity for laughter
be one of the things which separates men from brutes, the quality
of laughter draws a sharp dividing-line between the trained
intelligence and the vacant mind. The humour of a race interprets
the character of a race, and the mental condition of which laughter
is the expression is something which it behooves the student of human
nature and the student of national traits to understand very clearly.
Now our American humour is, on the whole, good-tempered and decent.
It is scandalously irreverent (reverence is a quality which seems
to have been left out of our composition); but it has neither the
pitilessness of the Latin, nor the grossness of the Teuton jest. As
Mr. Gilbert said of Sir Beerbohm Tree's "Hamlet," it is funny without
being coarse. We have at our best the art of being amusing in an
agreeable, almost an amiable, fashion; but then we have also the rare
good fortune to be very easily amused. Think of the current jokes
provided for our entertainment week by week, and day by day. Think
of the comic supplement of our Sunday newspapers, designed for the
refreshment of the feeble-minded, and calculated to blight the
spirits of any ordinarily intelligent household. Think of the
debilitated jests and stories which a time-honoured custom inserts
at the back of some of our magazines. It seems to be the custom of
happy American parents to report to editors the infantile prattle
of their engaging little children, and the editors print it for the
benefit of those who escape the infliction firsthand. There is a
story, pleasant but piteous, of Voltaire's listening with what
patience he could muster to a comedy which was being interpreted by
its author. At a certain point the dramatist read, "At this the
Chevalier laughed"; whereupon Voltaire murmured enviously, "How
fortunate the Chevalier was!" I think of that story whenever I am
struck afresh by the ease with which we are moved to mirth.
A painstaking German student, who has traced the history of humour
back to its earliest foundations, is of the opinion that there are
eleven original jokes known to the world, or rather that there are
eleven original and basic situations which have given birth to the
world's jokes; and that all the pleasantries with which we are daily
entertained are variations of these eleven originals, traceable
directly or indirectly to the same sources. There are times when we
are disposed to think eleven too generous a computation, and there
are less weary moments in which the inexhaustible supply of
situations still suggests fresh possibilities of laughter. Granted
that the ever fertile mother-in-law jest and the one about the
talkative barber were venerable in the days of Plutarch; there are
others more securely and more deservedly rooted in public esteem
which are, by comparison, new. Christianity, for example, must be
held responsible for the missionary and cannibal joke, of which we
have grown weary unto death; but which nevertheless possesses
astonishing vitality, and exhibits remarkable breadth of treatment.
Sydney Smith did not disdain to honour it with a joyous and unclerical
quatrain; and the agreeable author of "Rab and his Friends" has told
us the story of his fragile little schoolmate whose mother had
destined him for a missionary, "though goodness knows there wasn't
enough of him to go around among many heathen."
To Christianity is due also the somewhat ribald mirth which has clung
for centuries about Saint Peter as gatekeeper of Heaven. We can trace
this mirth back to the rude jests of the earliest miracle plays. We
see these jests repeated over and over again in the folklore of Latin
and Germanic nations. And if we open a comic journal to-day, there
is more than a chance that we shall find Saint Peter, key in hand,
uttering his time-honoured witticisms. This well-worn situation
depends, as a rule, upon that common element of fun-making, the
incongruous. Saint Peter invaded by air-ships. Saint Peter
outwitting a squad of banner-flying suffragettes. Saint Peter losing
his saintly temper over the expansive philanthropy of millionaires.
Now and then a bit of true satire, like Mr. Kipling's "Tomlinson,"
conveys its deeper lesson to humanity. A recently told French story
describes a lady of good reputation, family, and estate, presenting
herself fearlessly at the gates of Heaven. Saint Peter receives her
politely, and leads her through a street filled with lofty and
beautiful mansions, any one of which she thinks will satisfy her
requirements; but, to her amazement, they pass them by. Next they
come to more modest but still charming houses with which she feels
she could be reasonably content; but again they pass them by. Finally
they reach a small and mean dwelling in a small and mean thoroughfare.
"This," says Saint Peter, "is your habitation." "This!" cries the
indignant lady; "I could not possibly live in any place so shabby
and inadequate." "I am sorry, madame," replies the saint urbanely;
"but we have done the best we could with the materials you furnished
us."
There are no bounds to the loyalty with which mankind clings to a
well-established jest, there is no limit to the number of times a
tale will bear retelling. Occasionally we give it a fresh setting,
adorn it with fresh accessories, and present it as new-born to the
world; but this is only another indication of our affectionate
tenacity. I have heard that caustic gibe of Queen Elizabeth's anent
the bishop's lady and the bishop's wife (the Tudors had a biting wit
of their own) retold at the expense of an excellent lady, the wife
of a living American bishop; and the story of the girl who, professing
religion, gave her ear-rings to a sister, because she knew they were
taking _her_ to Hell,--a story which dates from the early Wesleyan
revivals in England,--I have heard located in Philadelphia, and
assigned to one of Mr. Torrey's evangelistic services. We still
resort, as in the days of Sheridan, to our memories for our jokes,
and to our imaginations for our facts.
Moreover, we Americans have jests of our own,--poor things for the
most part, but our own. They are current from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, they appear with commendable regularity in our newspapers
and comic journals, and they have become endeared to us by a lifetime
of intimacy. The salient characteristics of our great cities, the
accepted traditions of our mining-camps, the contrast between East
and West, the still more familiar contrast between the torpor of
Philadelphia and Brooklyn ("In the midst of life," says Mr. Oliver
Herford, "we are--in Brooklyn") and the uneasy speed of New
York,--these things furnish abundant material for everyday American
humour. There is, for example, the encounter between the Boston girl
and the Chicago girl, who, in real life, might often be taken for
each other; but who, in the American joke, are as sharply
differentiated as the Esquimo and the Hottentot. And there is the
little Boston boy who always wears spectacles, who is always named
Waldo, and who makes some innocent remark about "Literary Ethics,"
or the "Conduct of Life." We have known this little boy too long to
bear a parting from him. Indeed, the mere suggestion that all
Bostonians are forever immersed in Emerson is one which gives
unfailing delight to the receptive American mind. It is a poor
community which cannot furnish its archaic jest for the diversion
of its neighbours.
The finest example of our bulldog resoluteness in holding on to a
comic situation, or what we conceive to be a comic situation, may
be seen every year when the twenty-second of February draws near,
and the shops of our great and grateful Republic break out into an
irruption of little hatchets, by which curious insignia we have
chosen to commemorate our first President. These toys, occasionally
combined with sprigs of artificial cherries, are hailed with
unflagging delight, and purchased with what appears to be patriotic
fervour. I have seen letter-carriers and post-office clerks wearing
little hatchets in their button-holes, as though they were party
buttons, or temperance badges. It is our great national joke, which
I presume gains point from the dignified and reticent character of
General Washington, and from the fact that he would have been
sincerely unhappy could he have foreseen the senile character of a
jest, destined, through our love of absurdity, our careful
cultivation of the inappropriate, to be linked forever with his name.
The easy exaggeration which is a distinctive feature of American
humour, and about which so much has been said and written, has its
counterpart in sober and truth-telling England, though we are always
amazed when we find it there, and fall to wondering, as we never
wonder at home, in what spirit it was received. There are two kinds
of exaggeration; exaggeration of statement, which is a somewhat
primitive form of humour, and exaggeration of phrase, which implies
a dexterous misuse of language, a skilful juggling with words. Sir
John Robinson gives, as an admirable instance of exaggeration of
statement, the remark of an American in London that his dining-room
ceiling was so low that he could not have anything for dinner but
soles. Sir John thought this could have been said only by an American,
only by one accustomed to have a joke swiftly catalogued as a joke,
and suffered to pass. An English jester must always take into account
the mental attitude which finds "Gulliver's Travels" "incredible."
When Mr. Edward FitzGerald said that the church at Woodbridge was
so damp that fungi grew about the communion rail, Woodbridge ladies
offered an indignant denial. When Dr. Thompson, the witty master of
Trinity, observed of an undergraduate that "all the time he could
spare from the neglect of his duties he gave to the adornment of his
person," the sarcasm made its slow way into print; whereupon an
intelligent British reader wrote to the periodical which had printed
it, and explained painstakingly that, inasmuch as it was not possible
to spare time from the neglect of anything, the criticism was
inaccurate.
Exaggeration of phrase, as well as the studied understatement which
is an even more effective form of ridicule, seem natural products
of American humour. They sound, wherever we hear them, familiar to
our ears. It is hard to believe that an English barrister, and not
a Texas ranch-man, described Boston as a town where respectability
stalked unchecked. Mazarin's plaintive reflection, "Nothing is so
disagreeable as to be obscurely hanged," carries with it an echo of
Wyoming or Arizona. Mr. Gilbert's analysis of Hamlet's mental
disorder,--
"Hamlet is idiotically sane,
With lucid intervals of lunacy,"--
has the pure flavour of American wit,--a wit which finds its most
audacious expression in burlesquing bitter things, and which misfits
its words with diabolic ingenuity. To match these alien jests, which
sound so like our own, we have the whispered warning of an American
usher (also quoted by Sir John Robinson) who opened the door to a
late comer at one of Mr. Matthew Arnold's lectures: "Will you please
make as little noise as you can, sir. The audience is asleep"; and
the comprehensive remark of a New England scholar and wit that he
never wanted to do anything in his life, that he did not find it was
expensive, unwholesome, or immoral. This last observation embraces
the wisdom of the centuries. Solomon would have endorsed it, and it
is supremely quotable as expressing a common experience with very
uncommon felicity.
When we leave the open field of exaggeration, that broad area which
is our chosen territory, and seek for subtler qualities in American
humour, we find here and there a witticism which, while admittedly
our own, has in it an Old-World quality. The epigrammatic remark of
a Boston woman that men get and forget, and women give and forgive,
shows the fine, sharp finish of Sydney Smith or Sheridan. A
Philadelphia woman's observation, that she knew there could be no
marriages in Heaven, because--"Well, women were there no doubt in
plenty, and some men; but not a man whom any woman would have," is
strikingly French. The word of a New York broker, when Mr. Roosevelt
sailed for Africa, "Wall Street expects every lion to do its duty!"
equals in brevity and malice the keen-edged satire of Italy. No
sharper thrust was ever made at prince or potentate.
The truth is that our love of a jest knows no limit and respects no
law. The incongruities of an unequal civilization (we live in the
land of contrasts) have accustomed us to absurdities, and reconciled
us to ridicule. We rather like being satirized by our own countrymen.
We are very kind and a little cruel to our humourists. We crown them
with praise, we hold them to our hearts, we pay them any price they
ask for their wares; but we insist upon their being funny all the
time. Once a humourist, always a humourist, is our way of thinking;
and we resent even a saving lapse into seriousness on the part of
those who have had the good or the ill fortune to make us laugh.
England is equally obdurate in this regard. Her love of laughter has
been consecrated by Oxford,--Oxford, the dignified refuge of English
scholarship, which passed by a score of American scholars to bestow
her honours on our great American joker. And because of this love
of laughter, so desperate in a serious nation, English jesters have
enjoyed the uneasy privileges of a court fool. Look at poor Hood.
What he really loved was to wallow in the pathetic,--to write such
harrowing verses as the "Bridge of Sighs," and the "Song of the Shirt"
(which achieved the rare distinction of being printed--like the
"Beggar's Petition"--on cotton handkerchiefs), and the "Lady's
Dream." Every time he broke from his traces, he plunged into these
morasses of melancholy; but he was always pulled out again, and
reharnessed to his jokes. He would have liked to be funny
occasionally and spontaneously, and it was the will of his master,
the public, that he should be funny all the time, or starve. Lord
Chesterfield wisely said that a man should live within his wit as
well as within his income; but if Hood had lived within his wit--which
might then have possessed a vital and lasting quality--he would have
had no income. His role in life was like that of a dancing bear, which
is held to commit a solecism every time it settles wearily down on
the four legs nature gave it.
The same tyrannous demand hounded Mr. Eugene Field along his
joke-strewn path. Chicago, struggling with vast and difficult
problems, felt the need of laughter, and required of Mr. Field that
he should make her laugh. He accepted the responsibility, and, as
a reward, his memory is hallowed in the city he loved and derided.
New York echoes this sentiment (New York echoes more than she
proclaims; she confirms rather than initiates); and when Mr. Francis
Wilson wrote some years ago a charming and enthusiastic paper for
the "Century Magazine," he claimed that Mr. Field was so great a
humourist as to be--what all great humourists are,--a moralist as
well. But he had little to quote which could be received as evidence
in a court of criticism; and many of the paragraphs which he deemed
it worth while to reprint were melancholy instances of that jaded
wit, that exhausted vitality, which in no wise represented Mr.
Field's mirth-loving spirit, but only the things which were ground
out of him when he was not in a mirthful mood.
The truth is that humour as a lucrative profession is a purely modern
device, and one which is much to be deplored. The older humourists
knew the value of light and shade. Their fun was precious in
proportion to its parsimony. The essence of humour is that it should
be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that
it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all,
must be our habitual frame of mind. But the professional humourist
cannot afford to be unexpected. The exigencies of his vocation compel
him to be relentlessly droll from his first page to his last, and
this accumulated drollery weighs like lead. Compared to it, sermons
are as thistle-down, and political economy is gay.