There is, perhaps, no word in the present day which has been more
frequently used and abused than “culture.” It has come so readily to
the lips of modern prophets, that it has acquired a secondary and
ironical significance. Some of our readers may have seen a clever
University parody (on the _Heathen Chinee_) describing the encounter of
two undergraduates in the streets of Oxford. One, in faultless attire,
replies proudly to the other’s inquiry where he is going—
“I am bound for some tea and tall culture.”
He is, in fact, on the way to a meeting of the Browning Society, and
when a Don hurries up to tell him the society has suddenly collapsed,
great is the lamentation!
Probably the society in question deserved no satire at all; but there
is a sort of “culture for culture’s sake” which does deserve to be held
up to ridicule.
We find nothing to laugh at, however, but a very real pathos, in the
letters that are reaching us literally from all quarters of the globe;
and we long to help the writers, as well as those who have similar
needs and longings unexpressed. “How can I attain self-culture?” is the
question asked in varying terms, but with the same refrain.
Girls, after schooldays are past, wake up to find themselves in a
region of vast, dimly-perceived possibilities:
“Moving about in worlds not realised.”
More to be pitied is the lot of those who have not had any schooldays
at all worth speaking of, and who are awaking to their own mental
poverty—poverty, while there is wealth all about them which they
cannot make their own. Their case is like that of the heir to some vast
estates, who cannot enjoy them, because he cannot prove his title.
What, then, is this much talked-of culture?
There are several things which it is _not_.
To begin with, it is not a superficial smattering of certain
accomplishments.
It is not a general readiness to talk about the reviews one has read of
new books.
It is not the varnish acquired from associating day by day with
well-educated and urbane people.
It is not development to an enormous extent in one direction only.
It is not attending one course of University Extension Lectures.
It is not the knack of cramming for examinations, and of passing them
with _éclat_.
All these elements may enter into culture, but they are not culture
itself.
It is a harder matter to define culture than to say what it is not.
As we write these words, our eye falls on the saying of a well-known
prelate, reported in the _Times_ of the day: “General culture—another
name for sympathetic interest in the world of human intelligence.”
This sounds rather highflown and difficult, but we may add three more
definitions—
“Culture is a study of perfection.”—_Matthew Arnold._
“Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the
passion for making them prevail.”—_Matthew Arnold._
“Culture is the process by which a man becomes all that he was created
capable of being.”—_Carlyle._
The third of these is, perhaps, the best working definition of culture,
for it shows its real importance and significance, and also makes it
simpler to understand.
Look at a neglected garden. The grass is long and rank; the beds are a
mere tangle of weeds and of straggling flowers that have run to seed,
or deteriorated in size and sweetness until they can hardly be called
flowers at all. It is a wilderness.
The garden is taken in hand and cultivated, not by a mechanical
ignorant gardener, but by someone who understands the capacities of
the soil, and knows what will do well and repay his care. See the
transformation in time to come! There is everything by turn that is
beautiful in its season; the lovely herbaceous border, the standard
rose-trees, the sheltered bed of lilies of the valley, the peaches
on the warm southern wall, the ferns waving in feathery profusion
in the cool corner near the well—all that the garden can produce
for delight to the eye or for food is there. The ground is not given
over exclusively to one flower, one vegetable; it is not stocked
mechanically for the summer with geraniums and calceolarias; but it is,
as we say in homely parlance, “made the most of” in every particular,
and is a delight to behold.
This may seem a simple illustration, and we are writing not for the
erudite, but for the simple reader. The man or woman of culture is
the man or woman whose nature has been cultivated in such a way as to
develop all its capabilities in the best possible direction; whose
education has been adapted skilfully to taste and capacity, and who has
been taught the art of self-instruction.
It is hardly necessary to urge the value of this “cultivation.”
“Cultivation is as necessary to the mind as food to the body,” said
a wise man, and this is gradually coming to be believed. Culture is
something more by far than mere instruction, though instruction is a
means by which it may be attained. Bearing in mind our simile of the
garden, we are led on from one thought to another.
It was a very wise man indeed who pointed out that, even as ground will
produce something, “herbs or weeds,” the mind will not remain empty
if it is not cultivated; it tends to become full of silly or ignorant
thoughts like “an unweeded garden.”
Again, in a well-ordered, cultivated plot of ground we have what is
useful as well as what is lovely. In culture, not only the acquirement
of “useful knowledge” plays a part, but the storing of the mind with
what is beautiful, the development of taste in all directions.
In brief, a woman of real culture is the woman who makes you
instinctively feel, when in her company, that she is just what she was
meant to be; harmoniously developed in accordance with her natural
capacity. There is nothing startling about her paraded attainments.
The extreme simplicity of a person of true culture is one of the most
marked traits, and the chief point that distinguishes spurious from
real culture is that the former is inclined to “tall talk” and the
latter is not.
Charles Dickens can still make us smile at his caricature of an
American L. L. (literary lady) and her remarks on her introduction to
some great personage. She immediately begins—
“Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of Immensity. Howls the
sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal in the whispering chambers
of Imagination. To hear it, sweet it is. But then outlaughs the stern
philosopher and saith to the Grotesque: ‘What ho; arrest for me that
Agency! Go, bring it here!’ And so the vision fadeth.”
The woman of culture does not attempt fine talking, and it is only
gradually that her power and charm dawn upon her companion. “It is
proof of a high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest
way.”
In the same manner simplicity is a proof of high breeding. The people
who are “somebody” are, as a rule, easy to “get on” with. It is the
rich “parvenue” who is disconcerting, and who tries to drag into her
conversation the names of great people or great doings that will
impress her companion.
When we observe this sort of thing in a woman, we always know she is
not “to the manner born.” So when we hear people declare, “I am afraid
of So-and-so because she is so clever,” we feel that, if there is
ground for their fear, there is something defective in the clever one’s
culture.
WHY SHOULD CULTURE BE DESIRED?
It opens the eye and ear to the beauty and greatness of the world,
revealing wonders that could not otherwise be understood, and bringing
with it a wealth of happiness; and more, it gives an understanding
of life in its due proportion. The woman of culture is not the woman
who objects to perform necessary tasks at a pinch because they are
“menial,” or takes offence at imaginary slights, or is for ever
fussing about her domestic duties and her servants, or gets up little
quarrels and “storms in a teacup” generally, or delights in ill-natured
gossip. She sees how ineffably small such things are, and she sees them
in this light because she has the width of vision which enables her to
discern the meaning of life as a whole. Those whose eyes have once been
opened to the beauty and pathos that lie around their path, even in the
common round of daily duty, do not notice the dust that clings to their
shoes.
Sympathy is an accompaniment of true culture; the sympathy that comes
of understanding. Ignorant people are very often hard just because of
ignorance. They cannot in the least enter into the feelings of others,
nor do they understand that there is a world beyond their own miserable
little enclosure.
For instance, what a puzzle a clever, sensitive, imaginative child is
to people of contented matter-of-fact stupidity! One need not think of
Maggie and Mrs. Tulliver, or Aurora Leigh and her aunt, to illustrate
this—there are plenty of examples from real life.
The girl does not take to sewing and the baking of bread and puddings;
she is always wanting to get hold of a book—never so happy as when
she is reading. Or the boy is always poring over the mysteries of
fern and flower—never so happy as when he is afoot to secure some
fresh specimen. People of culture would foresee that the one may be a
student, the other a botanist, in days to come, and, while of course
insisting that practical duty is not selfishly overlooked, they would
try to give scope for the individual taste. People without culture
would set the whole thing down as laziness and vagabond trifling and
“shirking,” to be severely repressed. Sympathetic insight is one of
the most valuable attributes of culture; valuable all through life,
especially when dealing with others.
But we can imagine that the reader may be thinking rather hopelessly,
“It is not necessary to preach to me on the advantages of culture; I
am fully convinced of them; but all you say makes me hopeless of ever
attaining such a degree of perfection. In fact, I can see culture is
not for me at all, and I must just go on as I am.”
The dictionary definition of culture is “the application of labour,
or other means, to improve good qualities, or growth.” This does not
sound quite like the other definitions, and a great deal of confusion
has been caused by people forgetting that the word “culture” is used
for two things—the “process” of cultivation, and the “result” of that
process. Now it is quite true that “culture,” in the last and highest
sense, is not within the reach of all our readers; but surely there is
no reader who would say she cannot “apply labour or other means” to
improve her intelligence, be it in ever so small a degree. It is better
to cultivate a garden ever so little than to leave it a wilderness.
Culture, looked upon as a process, may begin and go on almost
indefinitely. Goethe well says—
“Woe to every sort of culture which destroys the most effectual means
of all true culture, and directs us to the end, instead of rendering us
happy on the way.”
In other words, it is foolish to strain miserably after “culture for
culture’s sake,” endeavouring to reach an impossible goal, and feeling
discontented and wretched because it is too remote. The wise way is to
do the best one can with the opportunities that lie within reach. Every
girl who reads these pages can do something to render herself a little
nearer her ideal of “culture,” and in the subsequent papers we shall
try to show her how she can best succeed.
LILY WATSON.
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration]
CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.
BY MARGARET INNES.