convictions are not at the mercy of eloquence. The "oratory of
conviction," to borrow a phrase of Mr. Bagehot's, is so rare as to
be hardly worth taking into account. Fox used to say that if a speech
read well, it was "a damned bad speech," which is the final word of
cynicism, spoken by one who knew. It was the saving sense of England,
that solid, prosaic, dependable common sense, the bulwark of every
great nation, which, after Sheridan's famous speech, demanding the
impeachment of Warren Hastings, made the House adjourn "to collect
its reason,"--obviously because its reason had been lost. Sir
William Dolden, who moved the adjournment, frankly confessed that
it was impossible to give a "determinate opinion" while under the
spell of oratory. So the lawmakers, who had been fired to white heat,
retired to cool down again; and when Sheridan--always as deep in
difficulties as Micawber--was offered a thousand pounds for the
manuscript of the speech, he remembered Fox's verdict, and refused
to risk his unballasted eloquence in print.
Enthusiasm is praised because it implies an unselfish concern for
something outside our personal interest and advancement. It is
reverenced because the great and wise amendments, which from time
to time straighten the roads we walk, may always be traced back to
somebody's zeal for reform. It is rich in prophetic attributes,
banking largely on the unknown, and making up in nobility of design
what it lacks in excellence of attainment. Like simplicity, and
candour, and other much-commended qualities, enthusiasm is charming
until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm. It
is then that we begin to understand the attitude of Goethe, and
Talleyrand, and Pitt, and Sir Robert Peel, who saved themselves from
being consumed by resolutely refusing to ignite. "It is folly,"
observed Goethe, "to expect that other men will consent to believe
as we do"; and, having reconciled himself to this elemental obstinacy
of the human heart, it no longer troubled him that those whom he felt
to be wrong should refuse to acknowledge their errors.
There are men and women--not many--who have the happy art of making
their most fervent convictions endurable. Their hobbies do not
spread desolation over the social world, their prejudices do not
insult our intelligence. They may be so "abreast with the times" that
we cannot keep track of them, or they may be basking serenely in some
Early Victorian close. They may believe buoyantly in the Baconian
cipher, or in thought transference, or in the serious purposes of
Mr. George Bernard Shaw, or in anything else which invites credulity.
They may even express their views, and still be loved and cherished
by their friends.
How illuminating is the contrast which Hazlitt unconsciously draws
between the enthusiasms of Lamb which everybody was able to bear,
and the enthusiasms of Coleridge which nobody was able to bear. Lamb
would parade his admiration for some favourite author, Donne, for
example, whom the rest of the company probably abhorred. He would
select the most crabbed passages to quote and defend; he would
stammer out his piquant and masterful half sentences, his scalding
jests, his controvertible assertions; he would skilfully hint at the
defects which no one else was permitted to see; and if he made no
converts (wanting none), he woke no weary wrath. But we all have a
sneaking sympathy for Holcroft, who, when Coleridge was expatiating
rapturously and oppressively upon the glories of German
transcendental philosophy, and upon his own supreme command of the
field, cried out suddenly and with exceeding bitterness: "Mr.
Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met, and the most
unbearable in your eloquence."
I am not without a lurking suspicion that George Borrow must have
been at times unbearable in his eloquence. "We cannot refuse to meet
a man on the ground that he is an enthusiast," observes Mr. George
Street, obviously lamenting this circumstance; "but we should at
least like to make sure that his enthusiasms are under control."
Borrow's enthusiasms were never under control. He stood ready at a
moment's notice to prove the superiority of the Welsh bards over the
paltry poets of England, or to relate the marvellous Welsh prophecies,
so vague as to be always safe. He was capable of inflicting Armenian
verbs upon Isopel Berners when they sat at night over their gipsy
kettle in the dingle (let us hope she fell asleep as sweetly as does
Milton's Eve when Adam grows too garrulous); and he met the
complaints of a poor farmer on the hardness of the times with jubilant
praises of evangelicalism. "Better pay three pounds an acre, and live
on crusts and water in the present enlightened days," he told the
disheartened husbandman, "than pay two shillings an acre, and sit
down to beef and ale three times a day in the old superstitious ages."
This is _not_ the oratory of conviction. There are unreasoning
prejudices in favour of one's own stomach which eloquence cannot
gainsay. "I defy the utmost power of language to disgust me wi' a
gude denner," observes the Ettrick Shepherd; thus putting on record
the attitude of the bucolic mind, impassive, immutable, since
earth's first harvests were gleaned.
The artificial emotions which expand under provocation, and collapse
when the provocation is withdrawn, must be held responsible for much
mental confusion. Election oratory is an old and cherished
institution. It is designed to make candidates show their paces, and
to give innocent amusement to the crowd. Properly reinforced by brass
bands and bunting, graced by some sufficiently august presence, and
enlivened by plenty of cheering and hat-flourishing, it presents a
strong appeal. A political party is, moreover, a solid and
self-sustaining affair. All sound and alliterative generalities
about virile and vigorous manhood, honest and honourable labour,
great and glorious causes, are understood, in this country at least,
to refer to the virile and vigorous manhood of Republicans or
Democrats, as the case may be; and to uphold the honest and honourable,
great and glorious Republican or Democratic principles, upon which,
it is also understood, depends the welfare of the nation.
Yet even this sense of security cannot always save us from the chill
of collapsed enthusiasm. I was once at a great mass meeting, held
in the interests of municipal reform, and at which the principal
speaker was a candidate for office. He was delayed for a full hour
after the meeting had been opened, and this hour was filled with good
platform oratory. Speechmaker after speechmaker, all adepts in their
art, laid bare before our eyes the evils which consumed us, and called
upon us passionately to support the candidate who would lift us from
our shame. The fervour of the house rose higher and higher. Martial
music stirred our blood, and made us feel that reform and patriotism
were one. The atmosphere grew tense with expectancy, when suddenly
there came a great shout, and the sound of cheering from the crowd
in the streets, the crowd which could not force its way into the huge
and closely packed opera house. Now there are few things more
profoundly affecting than cheers heard from a distance, or muffled
by intervening walls. They have a fine dramatic quality, unknown to
the cheers which rend the air about us. When the chairman of the
meeting announced that the candidate was outside the doors, speaking
to the mob, the excitement reached fever heat. When some one cried,
"He is here!" and the orchestra struck the first bars of "Hail
Columbia," we rose to our feet, waving multitudinous flags, and
shouting out the rapture of our hearts.
And then,--and then there stepped upon the stage a plain, tired,
bewildered man, betraying nervous exhaustion in every line. He spoke,
and his voice was not the assured voice of a leader. His words were
not the happy words which instantly command attention. It was evident
to the discerning eye that he had been driven for days, perhaps for
weeks, beyond his strength and endurance; that he had resorted to
stimulants to help him in this emergency, and that they had failed;
that he was striving with feeble desperation to do the impossible
which was expected of him. I wondered even then if a few common words
of explanation, a few sober words of promise, would not have
satisfied the crowd, already sated with eloquence. I wondered if the
unfortunate man could feel the chill settling down upon the house
as he spoke his random and undignified sentences, whether he could
see the first stragglers slipping down the aisles. What did his
decent record, his honest purpose, avail him in an hour like this?
He tried to lash himself to vigour, but it was spurring a
broken-winded horse. The stragglers increased into a flying squadron,
the house was emptying fast, when the chairman in sheer desperation
made a sign to the leader of the orchestra, who waved his baton, and
"The Star-Spangled Banner" drowned the candidate's last words, and
brought what was left of the audience to its feet. I turned to a friend
beside me, the wife of a local politician who had been the most fiery
speaker of the evening. "Will it make any difference?" I asked, and
she answered disconsolately; "The city is lost, but we may save the
state."
Then we went out into the quiet streets, and I bethought me of
Voltaire's driving in a blue coach powdered with gilt stars to see
the first production of "Irene," and of his leaving the theatre to
find that enthusiasts had cut the traces of his horses, so that the
shouting mob might drag him home in triumph. But the mob, having done
its shouting, melted away after the irresponsible fashion of mobs,
leaving the blue coach stranded in front of the Tuileries, with
Voltaire shivering inside of it, until the horses could be brought
back, the traces patched up, and the driver recalled to his duty.
That "popular enthusiasm is but a fire of straw" has been amply
demonstrated by all who have tried to keep it going. It can be lighted
to some purpose, as when money is extracted from the enthusiasts
before they have had time to cool; but even this process--so
skilfully conducted by the initiated--seems unworthy of great and
noble charities, or of great and noble causes. It is true also that
the agitator--no matter what he may be agitating--is always sure of
his market; a circumstance which made that most conservative of
chancellors, Lord Eldon, swear with bitter oaths that, if he were
to begin life over again, he would begin it as an agitator. Tom Moore
tells a pleasant story (one of the many pleasant stories embalmed
in his vast sarcophagus of a diary) about a street orator whom he
heard address a crowd in Dublin. The man's eloquence was so stirring
that Moore was ravished by it, and he expressed to Sheil his
admiration for the speaker. "Ah," said Sheil carelessly, "that was
a brewer's patriot. Most of the great brewers have in their employ
a regular patriot who goes about among the publicans, talking violent
politics, which helps to sell the beer."
Honest enthusiasm, we are often told, is the power which moves the
world. Therefore it is perhaps that honest enthusiasts seem to think
that if they stopped pushing, the world would stop moving,--as though
it were a new world which didn't know its way. This belief inclines
them to intolerance. The more keen they are, the more contemptuous
they become. What Wordsworth admirably called "the self-applauding
sincerity of a heated mind" leaves them no loophole for doubt, and
no understanding of the doubter. In their volcanic progress they bowl
over the non-partisan--a man and a brother--with splendid unconcern.
He, poor soul, stunned but not convinced, clings desperately to some
pettifogging convictions which he calls truth, and refuses a clearer
vision. His habit of remembering what he believed yesterday clogs
his mind, and makes it hard for him to believe something entirely
new to-day. Much has been said about the inconvenience of keeping
opinions, but much might be said about the serenity of the process.
Old opinions are like old friends,--we cease to question their worth
because, after years of intimacy and the loss of some valuable
illusions, we have grown to place our slow reliance on them. We know
at least where we stand, and whither we are tending, and we refuse
to bustle feverishly about the circumference of life, because, as
Amiel warns us, we cannot reach its core.
The Temptation of Eve
"My Love in her attire doth shew her wit."
It is an old and honoured jest that Eve--type of eternal
womanhood--sacrificed the peace of Eden for the pleasures of dress.
We see this jest reflected in the satire of the Middle Ages, in the
bitter gibes of mummer and buffoon. We can hear its echoes in the
invectives of the reformer,--"I doubt," said a good
fifteenth-century bishop to the ladies of England in their horned
caps,--"I doubt the Devil sit not between those horns." We find it
illustrated with admirable naivete in the tapestries which hang in
the entrance corridor of the Belle Arti in Florence.
These tapestries tell the downfall of our first parents. In one we
see the newly created and lovely Eve standing by the side of the
sleeping Adam, and regarding him with pleasurable anticipation.
Another shows us the animals marching in line to be inspected and
named. The snail heads the procession and sets the pace. The lion
and the tiger stroll gossiping together. The unicorn walks alone,
very stiff and proud. Two rats and two mice are closely followed by
two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the
time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall assign them their natural
prey. In the third tapestry the deed has been done, the apple had
been eaten. The beasts are ravening in the background. Adam, already
clad, is engaged in fastening a picturesque girdle of leaves around
the unrepentant Eve,--for all the world like a modern husband
fastening his wife's gown,--while she for the first time gathers up
her long fair hair. Her attitude is full of innocent yet
indescribable coquetry. The passion for self-adornment had already
taken possession of her soul. Before her lies a future of many cares
and some compensations. She is going to work and she is going to weep,
but she is also going to dress. The price was hers to pay.
In the hearts of Eve's daughters lies an unspoken convincement that
the price was not too dear. As far as feminity is known, or can ever
be known, one dominant impulse has never wavered or weakened. In
every period of the world's history, in every quarter of the globe,
in every stage of savagery or civilization, this elementary instinct
has held, and still holds good. The history of the world is largely
the history of dress. It is the most illuminating of records, and
tells its tale with a candour and completeness which no chronicle
can surpass. We all agree in saying that people who reached a high
stage of artistic development, like the Greeks and the Italians of
the Renaissance, expressed this sense of perfection in their attire;
but what we do not acknowledge so frankly is that these same nations
encouraged the beauty of dress, even at a ruthless cost, because they
felt that in doing so they cooperated with a great natural law,--the
law which makes the "wanton lapwing" get himself another crest. They
played into nature's hands.
The nations which sought to bully nature, like the Spartans and the
Spaniards, passed the severest sumptuary laws; and for proving the
power of fundamental forces over the unprofitable wisdom of
reformers, there is nothing like a sumptuary law. In 1563 Spanish
women of good repute were forbidden to wear jewels or
embroideries,--the result being that many preferred to be thought
reputationless, rather than abandon their finery. Some years later
it was ordained that only women of loose life should be permitted
to bare their shoulders; and all dressmakers who furnished the
interdicted gowns to others than courtesans were condemned to four
years' penal servitude. These were stern measures,--"root and
branch" was ever the Spaniard's cry; but he found it easier to stamp
out heresy than to eradicate from a woman's heart something which
is called vanity, but which is, in truth, an overmastering impulse
which she is too wise to endeavour to resist.
As a matter of fact it was a sumptuary law which incited the women
of Rome to make their first great public demonstration, and to
besiege the Forum as belligerently as the women of England have, in
late years, besieged Parliament. The Senate had thought fit to save
money for the second Punic War by curtailing all extravagance in
dress; and, when the war was over, showed no disposition to repeal
a statute which--to the simple masculine mind--seemed productive of
nothing but good. Therefore the women gathered in the streets of Rome,
demanding the restitution of their ornaments, and deeply
scandalizing poor Cato, who could hardly wedge his way through the
crowd. His views on this occasion were expressed with the bewildered
bitterness of a modern British conservative. He sighed for the good
old days when women were under the strict control of their fathers
and husbands, and he very plainly told the Senators that if they had
maintained their proper authority at home, their wives and daughters
would not then be misbehaving themselves in public. "It was not
without painful emotions of shame," said this outraged Roman
gentleman, "that I just now made my way to the Forum through a herd
of women. Our ancestors thought it improper that women should
transact any private business without a director. We, it seems,
suffer them to interfere in the management of state affairs, and to
intrude into the general assemblies. Had I not been restrained by
the modesty and dignity of some among them, had I not been unwilling
that they should be rebuked by a Consul, I should have said to them:
'What sort of practice is this of running into the streets, and
addressing other women's husbands? Could you not have petitioned at
home? Are your blandishments more seductive in public than in private,
and with other husbands than your own?'"
How natural it all sounds, how modern, how familiar! And with what
knowledge of the immutable laws of nature, as opposed to the
capricious laws of man, did Lucius Valerius defend the rebellious
women of Rome! "Elegance of apparel," he pleaded before the Senate,
"and jewels, and ornaments,--these are a woman's badges of
distinction; in these she glories and delights; these our ancestors
called the woman's world. What else does she lay aside in mourning
save her purple and gold? What else does she resume when the mourning
is over? How does she manifest her sympathy on occasions of public
rejoicing, but by adding to the splendour of her dress?"[1]
[Footnote 1: Livy.]
Of course the statute was repealed. The only sumptuary laws which
defied resistance were those which draped the Venetian gondolas and
the Milanese priests in black, and with such restrictions women had
no concern.
The symbolism of dress is a subject which has never received its due
share of attention, yet it stands for attributes in the human race
which otherwise defy analysis. It is interwoven with all our carnal
and with all our spiritual instincts. It represents a cunning triumph
over hard conditions, a turning of needs into victories. It voices
desires and dignities without number, it subjects the importance of
the thing done to the importance of the manner of doing it. "Man wears
a special dress to kill, to govern, to judge, to preach, to mourn,
to play. In every age the fashion in which he retains or discards
some portion of this dress denotes a subtle change in his feelings."
All visible things are emblematic of invisible forces. Man fixed the
association of colours with grief and gladness, he made ornaments
the insignia of office, he ordained that fabric should grace the
majesty of power.
Yet though we know this well, it is our careless custom to talk about
dress, and to write about dress, as if it had no meaning at all; as
if the breaking waves of fashion which carry with them the record
of pride and gentleness, of distinction and folly, of the rising and
shattering of ideals,--"the cut which betokens intellect and talent,
the colour which betokens temper and heart,"--were guided by no other
law than chance, were a mere purposeless tyranny. Historians dwell
upon the mad excesses of ruff and farthingale, of pointed shoe and
swelling skirt, as if these things stood for nothing in a society
forever alternating between rigid formalism and the irrepressible
spirit of democracy.
Is it possible to look at a single costume painted by Velasquez
without realizing that the Spanish court under Philip the Fourth had
lost the mobility which has characterized it in the days of Ferdinand
and Isabella, and had hardened into a formalism, replete with dignity,
but lacking intelligence, and out of touch with the great social
issues of the day? French chroniclers have written page after page
of description--aimless and tiresome description, for the most
part--of those amazing head-dresses which, at the court of Marie
Antoinette, rose to such heights that the ladies looked as if their
heads were in the middle of their bodies. They stood seven feet high
when their hair was dressed, and a trifle over five when it wasn't.
The Duchesse de Lauzun wore upon one memorable occasion a head-dress
presenting a landscape in high relief on the shore of a stormy lake,
ducks swimming on the lake, a sportsman shooting at the ducks, a mill
which rose from the crown of her head, a miller's wife courted by
an abbe, and a miller placidly driving his donkey down the steep
incline over the lady's left ear.
It sounds like a Christmas pantomime; but when we remember that the
French court, that model of patrician pride, was playing with
democracy, with republicanism, with the simple life, as presented
by Rousseau to its consideration, we see plainly enough how the real
self-sufficiency of caste and the purely artificial sentiment of the
day found expression in absurdities of costume. Women dared to wear
such things, because, being aristocrats, they felt sure of
themselves: and they professed to admire them, because, being
engulfed in sentiment, they had lost all sense of proportion. A
miller and his donkey were rustic (Marie Antoinette adored
rusticity); an abbe flirting with a miller's wife was as obviously
artificial as Watteau. It would have been hard to find a happier or
more expressive combination. And when Rousseau and republicanism had
won the race, we find the ladies of the Directoire illustrating the
national illusions with clinging and diaphanous draperies; and
asserting their affinity with the high ideals of ancient Greece by
wearing sandals instead of shoes, and rings on their bare white toes.
The reaction from the magnificent formalism of court dress to this
abrupt nudity is in itself a record as graphic and as illuminating
as anything that historians have to tell. The same great principle
was at work in England when the Early Victorian virtues asserted
their supremacy, when the fashionable world, becoming for a spell
domestic and demure, expressed these qualities in smoothly banded
hair, and draperies of decorous amplitude. There is, in fact, no
phase of national life or national sentiment which has not betrayed
itself to the world in dress.