FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIAL FAILURES.
The French social failure is generally a radical. If he had cared to do
as plenty of others do (and seeing you prosperous, he accompanies this
with an expressive glance), if he had cared to intrigue and curry favor,
he too could have cut a figure in the world. But unhappily for himself,
he does not know how to disguise his opinions; he is, according to the
formula, poor but honest.
It is his pride that leads him to avoid the lucky ones of the earth; he
has no desire to be taken for a schemer. If he has lost all else, honor
still is left, and this, his only remaining treasure, he intends to
preserve intact.
He despises money, and if he does not return that little loan he
borrowed of you, it is because he presumes that your contempt for
filthy lucre is equal to his own.
Yet the sight of gold melts him, and there flits across his face a smile
of satisfaction, mingled, however, with a tinge of sadness at the
thought of being caught capitulating with the enemy. But to convince
himself that he has lost none of his independence of character, he goes
straightway and says evil of you, so that no man shall say of him that
he was corrupted by the loan of a paltry coin.
You will generally find that he has been bankrupt once or twice; but as
that has not made a rich man of him, you conclude that, if he has not a
great love of money, neither has he a great talent for business.
He lays his poverty at everyone's door but his own. Society does not
understand him. He shall go to his grave without having had a chance of
revealing himself to the world. Meanwhile he opens a general agency. Not
having been successful with his own affairs, he hopes to have better
luck with other people's.
As a rule, you find that he has married a servant or a laundress, "to
pay a debt he owed to Society," as he puts it. But Society, who is but a
thankless jade, turns her back upon him and his wife. Never mind, he has
done his duty. Upon this point he finds nothing to reproach himself
with. Some men marry for money; thank Heaven, he is not one of that
sort.
Let anything you undertake prove a success, and you will hear him say
that he had thought of doing it long ago; it was only his idea stolen
from him. But there's the rub; what is the use of ideas, when one has no
capital?
And, instead of setting to work to get a capital, he writes anonymous
letters.
He occasionally talks of committing suicide, of throwing himself into
the sea; but this idea of his has been stolen so many times over that he
gives it up in disgust.
When he does die, it will be of spite.
You will survive the loss of him without difficulty.
His presence is a hair in your soup, a crumb in your bed.
The French social failure is not uncommonly a philosopher, and even
keeps a spark of facetiousness through all his misfortunes.
About ten years ago, I was talking one day with a Frenchman, who had
been established in England some time. _Established!_ I am getting
facetious, too, you see.
I was erroneously maintaining to him that imprisonment was still
inflicted in England for debt.
"You are mistaken, I can assure you," said he.
"I do not think so," I replied.
"Imprisonment for debt was abolished two years ago."
"Are you quite sure?" said I, seeing him so positive.
"_Parbleu!_ I ought to know better than you," he said. "I was the last
to come out."
The English social failure is much more humble than his like in France,
for the simple reason that, in France, poverty is no crime, while in
England, as in America, it is. Apart from this the two types do not
differ much.
In the commercial world, the English social failure is an agent of some
sort; generally wine or coal. In the exercise of his calling, he
requires no capital, nor even a cellar. He not unfrequently entitles
himself _General Agent_: this, when the wreck is at hand. Such are the
straws he clutches at; if they should break, he sinks, and is heard of
no more, unless his wife comes to the rescue, by setting up a lodging
house or a boarding school for young ladies. There, once more in smooth
water, he wields the blacking brush, makes acquaintance with the knife
board, or gets in the provisions. In allowing himself to be kept by his
wife, he feels he loses some dignity, but if she should adopt any airs
of superiority over him, he can always bring her to a sense of duty by
beating her.
In the republics of art and letters, you generally find him playing the
part of critic, consoling himself for his failures by abusing the
artists who sell their pictures, or the authors who sell their books.
For these he knows no pity. He can all the more easily abuse his dear
brethren of the quill or brush that he has not to sign his invectives;
his prose is anonymous. Once a week, in the columns of some penny paper,
he can, with perfect impunity, relieve his heart of the venom it
contains.
The mud he scatters has one good quality--it does not stain; one
fillip ... and it is gone.
Here is a sample of this kind of production. I extract it from a paper
as pretentious as it is little read:
"The fortunate writer woke up one morning to find himself
famous, and his book on a tide of popularity which carried it,
in one year, through some fifty editions. A grand stroke of
this kind insures the ambition to repeat it.... His new book
bears throughout manifest evidences of having been scrambled
through, and put together anyhow, in order to recapture the
notice _and the money of the public_."
Now Carlyle, who was very sensitive to adverse criticism, used to call
these revengeful failures in literature "dirty puppies," and it was kind
of him to so far notice them.
But if I were the author in question, an answer somewhat in the
following style would rise to my pen:
"_My Dear Sir_: I admire your independence and your contempt
for the money and the favors of the public. But one question I
would ask of you: Why do you send your invectives to the wrong
address? If I am famous, as you are pleased to say, without
believing it any more than myself, do not lay the blame upon
me, my dear sir; lay it rather upon that 'fool of a public'
who is silly enough to prefer my scribblings to your
_chefs-d'oeuvre_. Not for the world would I say anything that
might be disagreeable to you, but I would fain remind you that,
ever since the days of Horace, the authors of books that sell
have never been appreciated by the authors of the books that do
not."
The bitterness of Mr. Tommy Hawk's criticisms forms a curious contrast
with the fairness and good-nature of the serious English critic.
The latter possesses a large stock of good sense, good taste, learning,
and independence. He can blend counsel and encouragement, and he has a
conscience; that is to say, as much aversion to disparaging as to
flattering. The same author whom he praised yesterday because his work
was worthy of praise, he blames to-day because his work is deserving of
blame; he is no respecter of persons.
Criticism should be taken with thanks and deference, if fair and kind;
with deference and no thanks, if fair but unkind; with silence and
contempt, if insulting and unfair.
So says D'Alembert.
* * * * *
May I now permit myself to indulge in a little personality?
Mr. George Augustus Sala, the wittiest and best-humored of English
journalists, in one of his interesting _Echoes of the Week_, not long
ago accused a book of my own, after paying it one or two compliments, of
being as full of blunders as an egg is full of meat.
Now, could Mr. George Augustus Sala, with his knowledge of London dairy
produce, pay my book a more witty and graceful compliment?