her!--to find lecture engagements for a Miss Ramsay, Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay, who wants to tell the American public what she
knows about Dante. Why a Scotchwoman should be turned loose in the
Inferno, I cannot say; but it seems her father or her grandfather
wrote school-books, and she is carrying on the educational
traditions of the family. Hannah made the unholy suggestion that she
should speak at the Contemporary Club, and offered as an inducement
the fact that she couldn't be heard in so large a room. But we are
supposed to discuss topics of the day, and Dante happened some little
while ago. He has no bearing upon aviation, or National Insurance
Bills (that is our subject next Monday night); but he is brimming
over with ethics, and it is the duty of your precious Ethical Society
to grapple with him exhaustively. I always wondered what took you
to that strange substitute for church; but now I see in it the hand
of Providence pointing the way to Miss Ramsay's lecture field. Please
persuade your fellow Ethicals that four lectures--or even one
lecture--on Dante will be what Alice Hunt calls an "uplift." I feel
that I must try and find an opening for Hannah's protegee, because
she helped me with Fraulein Breitenbach's concert last winter,--a
circumstance she does not lightly permit me to forget. Did I say,
"May Heaven forgive her" for saddling me with this Scotch
schoolmaster's daughter? Well, I take back that devout supplication.
May jackals sit on her grandmother's grave! Meantime here is Miss
Ramsay to be provided for. If your Ethicals (disregarding their duty)
will have none of her, please think up somebody with a taste for
serious study, and point out that Dante, elucidated by a Scotchwoman,
will probably be as serious as anything that has visited Philadelphia
since the yellow fever.
If you want one of Grisette's kittens, there are still two left. The
handsomest of all has gone to live in regal splendour at the Bruntons,
and I have promised another to our waitress who was married last month.
Such are the vicissitudes of life.
Ever yours,
VIOLET WRAY.
_Mrs. J. Lockwood Smith to Mrs. James Gordon Harrington Balderston_
DEAR MRS. BALDERSTON,--
I want to enlist your interest in a clever young Scotchwoman, a Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay, who hopes to give four lectures on Dante in
Philadelphia this winter. Her father was an eminent teacher in his
day, and I understand she is thoroughly equipped for her work. Heaven
knows I wish fewer lecturers would cross the sea to enlighten our
ignorance, and so will you when you get this letter; but I remember
with what enthusiasm you talked about Italy and Dante at Brown's
Mills last spring, and I trust that your ardour has not waned. The
Century Club seems to me the best possible field for Miss Ramsay.
Do you know any one on the entertainment committee, and do you think
it is not too late in the season to apply? Of course there are always
the schools. Dear Mrs. Balderston, I should feel more shame in
troubling you, did I not know how capable you are, and how much weight
your word carries. Violet Wray and Mrs. Wilfred Hamilton are
tremendously interested in Miss Ramsay. May I tell Violet to send
her to you, so that you can see for yourself what she is like, and
what chances she has of success? Please be quite frank in saying yes
or no, and believe me always,
Yours very cordially,
ANN HAZELTON SMITH.
The Customary Correspondent
"Letters warmly sealed and coldly opened."--RICHTER.
Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for
the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision
of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack
of leisure, the lack of sentiment,--Mr. Lucas adds the lack of
stamps,--which chill the ardour of the correspondent; and they fail
to ascertain how chilled he is, or how far he sets at naught these
justly restraining influences. They talk of telegrams, and
telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any
device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that
passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.
They also fail to note that, side by side with telephones and
telegrams, comes the baleful reduction of postage rates, which
lowers our last barrier of defence. Two cents an ounce leaves us naked
at the mercy of the world.
It is on record that a Liverpool tradesman once wrote to Dickens,
to express the pleasure he had derived from that great Englishman's
immortal novels, and enclosed, by way of testimony, a cheque for five
hundred pounds. This is a phenomenon which ought to be more widely
known than it is, for there is no natural law to prevent its
recurrence; and while the world will never hold another Dickens,
there are many deserving novelists who may like to recall the
incident when they open their morning's mail. It would be pleasant
to associate our morning's mail with such fair illusions; and though
writing to strangers is but a parlous pastime, the Liverpool
gentleman threw a new and radiant light upon its possibilities. "The
gratuitous contributor is, _ex vi termini_, an ass," said
Christopher North sourly; but then he never knew, nor ever deserved
to know, this particular kind of contribution.
Generally speaking, the unknown correspondent does not write to
praise. His guiding principle is the diffusion of useless knowledge,
and he demands or imparts it according to the exigencies of the hour.
It is strange that a burning thirst for information should be
combined with such reluctance to acquire it through ordinary
channels. A man who wishes to write a paper on the botanical value
of Shakespeare's plays does not dream of consulting a concordance
and a botany, and then going to work. The bald simplicity of such
a process offends his sense of magnitude. He writes to a
distinguished scholar, asking a number of burdensome questions, and
is apparently under the impression that the resources of the
scholar's mind, the fruits of boundless industry, should be
cheerfully placed at his disposal. A woman who meditates a "literary
essay" upon domestic pets is not content to track her quarry through
the long library shelves. She writes to some painstaking worker,
enquiring what English poets have "sung the praises of the cat," and
if Cowper was the only author who ever domesticated hares? One of
Huxley's most amusing letters is written in reply to a gentleman who
wished to compile an article on "Home Pets of Celebrities," and who
unhesitatingly applied for particulars concerning the Hodeslea cat.
These are, of course, labour-saving devices, but economy of effort
is not always the ambition of the correspondent. It would seem easier,
on the whole, to open a dictionary of quotations than to compose an
elaborately polite letter, requesting to know who said--
"Fate cannot harm me; I have dined to-day."
It is certainly easier, and far more agreeable, to read Charles
Lamb's essays than to ask a stranger in which one of them he
discovered the author's heterodox views on encyclopaedias. It
involves no great fatigue to look up a poem of Herrick's, or a letter
of Shelley's, or a novel of Peacock's (these things are accessible
and repay enquiry), and it would be a rational and self-respecting
thing to do, instead of endeavouring to extort information (like an
intellectual footpad) from writers who are in no way called upon to
furnish it.
One thing is sure. As long as there are people in this world whose
guiding principle is the use of other people's brains, there can be
no decline and fall of letter-writing. The correspondence which
plagued our great-grandfathers a hundred years ago, plagues their
descendants to-day. Readers of Lockhart's "Scott" will remember how
an Edinburgh minister named Brunton, who wished to compile a hymnal,
wrote to the poet Crabbe for a list of hymns; and how Crabbe (who,
albeit a clergyman, knew probably as little about hymns as any man
in England) wrote in turn to Scott, to please help him to help
Brunton; and how Scott replied in desperation that he envied the
hermit of Prague who never saw pen nor ink. How many of us have in
our day thought longingly of that blessed anchorite! Surely Mr.
Herbert Spencer must, consciously or unconsciously, have shared
Scott's sentiments, when he wrote a letter to the public press,
explaining with patient courtesy that, being old, and busy, and very
tired, it was no longer possible for him to answer all the unknown
correspondents who demanded information upon every variety of
subject. He had tried to do this for many years, but the tax was too
heavy for his strength, and he was compelled to take refuge in
silence.
Ingenious authors and editors who ask for free copy form a class apart.
They are not pursuing knowledge for their own needs, but offering
themselves as channels through which we may gratuitously enlighten
the world. Their questions, though intimate to the verge of
indiscretion, are put in the name of humanity; and we are bidden to
confide to the public how far we indulge in the use of stimulants,
what is the nature of our belief in immortality, if--being women--we
should prefer to be men, and what incident of our lives has most
profoundly affected our careers. Reticence on our part is met by the
assurance that eminent people all over the country are hastening to
answer these queries, and that the "unique nature" of the discussion
will make it of permanent value to mankind. We are also told in
soothing accents that our replies need not exceed a few hundred words,
as the editor is nobly resolved not to infringe upon our valuable
time.
Less commercial, but quite as importunate, are the correspondents
who belong to literary societies, and who have undertaken to read,
before these select circles, papers upon every conceivable subject,
from the Bride of the Canticle to the divorce laws of France. They
regret their own ignorance--as well they may--and blandly ask for
aid. There is no limit to demands of this character. The young
Englishwoman who wrote to Tennyson, requesting some verses which she
might read as her own at a picnic, was not more intrepid than the
American school-girl who recently asked a man of letters to permit
her to see an unpublished address, as she had heard that it dealt
with the subject of her graduation paper, and hoped it might give
her some points. It is hard to believe that the timidity natural to
youth--or which we used to think natural to youth--could be so easily
overcome; or that the routine of school work, which makes for honest
if inefficient acquirements, could leave a student still begging or
borrowing her way.
We must in justice admit, however, that the unknown correspondent
is as ready to volunteer assistance as to demand it. He is ingenious
in criticism, and fertile in suggestions. He has inspirations in the
way of plots and topics,--like that amiable baronet, Sir John
Sinclair, who wanted Scott to write a poem on the adventures and
intrigues of a Caithness mermaiden, and who proffered him, by way
of inducement, "all the information I possess." The correspondent's
tone, when writing to humbler drudges in the field, is kind and
patronizing. He admits that he likes your books, or at least--here
is a veiled reproach--that he "has liked the earlier ones"; he
assumes, unwarrantably, that you are familiar with his favourite
authors; and he believes that it would be for you "an interesting
and congenial task" to trace the "curious connection" between
American fiction and the stock exchange. Sometimes, with thinly
veiled sarcasm, he demands that you should "enlighten his dulness,"
and say _why_ you gave your book its title. If he cannot find a French
word you have used in his "excellent dictionary," he thinks it worth
while to write and tell you so. He fears you do not "wholly understand
or appreciate the minor poets of your native land"; and he protests,
more in sorrow than in anger, against certain innocent phrases with
which you have disfigured "your otherwise graceful pages."
Now it must be an impulse not easily resisted which prompts people
to this gratuitous expression of their opinions. They take a world
of trouble which they could so easily escape; they deem it their
privilege to break down the barriers which civilization has taught
us to respect; and if they ever find themselves repaid, it is
assuredly by something remote from the gratitude of their
correspondents. Take, for example, the case of Mr. Peter Bayne,
journalist, and biographer of Martin Luther, who wrote to
Tennyson,--with whom he was unacquainted,--protesting earnestly
against a line in "Lady Clare":--
"'If I'm a beggar born,' she said."
It was Mr. Bayne's opinion that such an expression was not only
exaggerated, inasmuch as the nurse was not, and never had been, a
beggar; but, coming from a child to her mother, was harsh and unfilial.
"The criticism of my heart," he wrote, "tells me that Lady Clare could
never have said that."
Tennyson was perhaps the last man in Christendom to have accepted
the testimony of Mr. Bayne's heart-throbs. He intimated with some
asperity that he knew better than anyone else what Lady Clare _did_
say, and he pointed out that she had just cause for resentment against
a mother who had placed her in such an embarrassing position. The
controversy is one of the drollest in literature; but what is hard
to understand is the mental attitude of a man--and a reasonably busy
man--who could attach so much importance to Lady Clare's remarks,
and who could feel himself justified in correcting them.
Begging letters form a class apart. They represent a great and
growing industry, and they are too purposeful to illustrate the
abstract passion for correspondence. Yet marvellous things have been
done in this field. There is an ingenuity, a freshness and fertility
of device about the begging letter which lifts it often to the realms
of genius. Experienced though we all are, it has surprises in store
for every one of us. Seasoned though we are, we cannot read without
appreciation of its more daring and fantastic flights. There was,
for instance, a very imperative person who wrote to Dickens for a
donkey, and who said he would call for it the next day, as though
Dickens kept a herd of donkeys in Tavistock Square, and could always
spare one for an emergency. There was a French gentleman who wrote
to Moore, demanding a lock of Byron's hair for a young lady, who
would--so he said--die if she did not get it. This was a very
lamentable letter, and Moore was conjured, in the name of the young
lady's distracted family, to send the lock, and save her from the
grave. And there was a misanthrope who wrote to Peel that he was weary
of the ways of men (as so, no doubt, was Peel), and who requested
a hermitage in some nobleman's park, where he might live secluded
from the world. The best begging-letter writers depend upon the
element of surprise as a valuable means to their end. I knew a
benevolent old lady who, in 1885, was asked to subscribe to a fund
for the purchase of "moderate luxuries" for the French soldiers in
Madagascar. "What did you do?" I asked, when informed of the incident.
"I sent the money," was the placid reply. "I thought I might never
again have an opportunity to send money to Madagascar."
It would be idle to deny that a word of praise, a word of thanks,
sometimes a word of criticism, have been powerful factors in the
lives of men of genius. We know how profoundly Lord Byron was affected
by the letter of a consumptive girl, written simply and soberly,
signed with initials only, seeking no notice and giving no address;
but saying in a few candid words that the writer wished before she
died to thank the poet for the rapture his poems had given her. "I
look upon such a letter," wrote Byron to Moore, "as better than a
diploma from Gottingen." We know, too, what a splendid impetus to
Carlyle was that first letter from Goethe, a letter which he
confessed seemed too wonderful to be real, and more "like a message
from fairyland." It was but a brief note after all, tepid, sensible,
and egotistical; but the magic sentence, "It may be I shall yet hear
much of you," became for years an impelling force, the kind of
prophecy which insured its own fulfilment.
Carlyle was susceptible to praise, though few readers had the
temerity to offer it. We find him, after the publication of the
"French Revolution," writing urbanely to a young and unknown
admirer; "I do not blame your enthusiasm." But when a less
happily-minded youth sent him some suggestions for the reformation
of society, Carlyle, who could do all his own grumbling, returned
his disciple's complaints with this laconic denial: "A pack of damned
nonsense, you unfortunate fool." It sounds unkind; but we must
remember that there were six posts a day in London, that "each post
brought its batch of letters," and that nine tenths of these
letters--so Carlyle says--were from strangers, demanding autographs,
and seeking or proffering advice. One man wrote that he was
distressingly ugly, and asked what should he do about it. "So
profitable have my epistolary fellow creatures grown to me in these
years," notes the historian in his journal, "that when the postman
leaves nothing, it may well be felt as an escape."
The most patient correspondent known to fame was Sir Walter Scott,
though Lord Byron surprises us at times by the fine quality of his
good nature. His letters are often petulant,--especially when Murray
has sent him tragedies instead of tooth-powder; but he is perhaps
the only man on record who received with perfect equanimity the
verses of an aspiring young poet, wrote him the cheerfullest of
letters, and actually invited him to breakfast. The letter is still
extant; but the verses were so little the precursor of fame that the
youth's subsequent history is to this day unknown. It was with truth
that Byron said of himself: "I am really a civil and polite person,
and do hate pain when it can be avoided."
Scott was also civil and polite, and his heart beat kindly for every
species of bore. As a consequence, the world bestowed its tediousness
upon him, to the detriment of his happiness and health. Ingenious
jokers translated his verses into Latin, and then wrote to accuse
him of plagiarizing from Vida. Proprietors of patent medicines
offered him fabulous sums to link his fame with theirs. Modest ladies
proposed that he should publish their effusions as his own, and share
the profits. Poets demanded that he should find publishers for their
epics, and dramatists that he should find managers for their plays.
Critics pointed out to him his anachronisms, and well-intentioned
readers set him right on points of morality and law. When he was old,
and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of
correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his
journal:--"A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose;
all from persons--my zealous admirers, of course--who expect me to
make up whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to a desirable
rank, and stand their protector and patron. I must, they take it for
granted, be astonished at having an address from a stranger. On the
contrary, I should be astonished if one of these extravagant epistles
came from anybody who had the least title to enter into
correspondence."
And there are people who believe, or who pretend to believe, that
fallen human nature can be purged and amended by half-rate telegrams,
and a telephone ringing in the hall. Rather let us abandon illusions,
and echo Carlyle's weary cry, when he heard the postman knocking at
his door: "Just Heavens! Does literature lead to this!"
The Benefactor
"He is a good man who can receive a gift well."--EMERSON.
There is a sacredness of humility in such an admission which wins
pardon for all the unlovely things which Emerson has crowded into
a few pages upon "Gifts." Recognizing that his own goodness stopped
short of this exalted point, he pauses for a moment in his able and
bitter self-defence to pay tribute to a generosity he is too honest
to claim. After all, who but Charles Lamb ever _did_ receive gifts
well? Scott tried, to be sure. No man ever sinned less than he against
the law of kindness. But Lamb did not need to try. He had it in his
heart of gold to feel pleasure in the presents which his friends took
pleasure in giving him. The character and quality of the gifts were
not determining factors. We cannot analyze this disposition. We can
only admire it from afar.
"I look upon it as a point of morality to be obliged to those who
endeavour to oblige me," says Sterne; and the sentiment, like most
of Sterne's sentiments, is remarkably graceful. It has all the
freshness of a principle never fagged out by practice. The rugged
fashion in which Emerson lived up to his burdensome ideals prompted
him to less engaging utterances. "It is not the office of a man to
receive gifts," he writes viciously. "How dare you give them? We wish
to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that
feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."
Carlyle is almost as disquieting. He searches for, and consequently
finds, unworthy feelings both in the man who gives, and holds himself
to be a benefactor, and in the man who receives, and burdens himself
with a sense of obligation. He professes a stern dislike for presents,
fearing lest they should undermine his moral stability; but a man
so up in morals must have been well aware that he ran no great risk
of parting with his stock in trade. He probably hated getting what
he did not want, and finding himself expected to be grateful for it.
This is a sentiment common to lesser men than Carlyle, and as old
as the oldest gift-bearer. It has furnished food for fables,
inspiration for satirists, and cruel stories at which the
light-hearted laugh. Mr. James Payn used to tell the tale of an
advocate who unwisely saved a client from the gallows which he should
have graced; and the man, inspired by the best of motives, sent his
benefactor from the West Indies a case of pineapples in which a colony
of centipedes had bred so generously that they routed every servant
from the unfortunate lawyer's house, and dwelt hideously and
permanently in his kitchen. "A purchase is cheaper than a gift," says
a wily old Italian proverb, steeped in the wisdom of the centuries.
The principle which prompts the selection of gifts--since selected
they all are by some one--is for the most part a mystery. I never
but once heard any reasonable solution, and that was volunteered by
an old lady who had been listening in silence to a conversation on
the engrossing subject of Christmas presents. It was a conversation
at once animated and depressing. The time was at hand when none of
us could hope to escape these tokens of regard, and the elaborate
and ingenious character of their unfitness was frankly and fairly
discussed. What baffled us was the theory of choice. Suddenly the
old lady flooded this dark problem with light by observing that she
always purchased her presents at bazaars. She said she knew they were
useless, and that nobody wanted them, but that she considered it her
duty to help the bazaars. She had the air of one conscious of
well-doing, and sure of her reward. It did not seem to occur to her
that the reward should, in justice, be passed on with the purchases.
The necessities of charitable organizations called for a sacrifice,
and, rising to the emergency, she sacrificed her friends.
A good many years have passed over our heads since Thackeray launched
his invectives at the Christmas tributes he held in heartiest
hatred,--the books which every season brought in its train, and which
were never meant to be read. Their mission was fulfilled when they
were sent by aunt to niece, by uncle to nephew, by friend to hapless
friend. They were "gift-books" in the exclusive sense of the word.
Thackeray was wont to declare that these vapid, brightly bound
volumes played havoc with the happy homes of England, just as the
New Year bonbons played havoc with the homes of France. Perhaps, of
the two countries, France suffered less. The candy soon disappeared,
leaving only impaired digestions in its wake. The books remained to
encumber shelves, and bore humanity afresh.
"Mol, je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison";