The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
That is no doubt in a measure true; yet it would be grossly unfair to
blame personally certain great ones of the past for the evil that has
lived after them and borne their names. For instance, it may be
doubted whether Louis XIV of France was all that he should have been.
His private life would hardly have escaped censure in Upper Montclair,
N. J., or West Newton, Mass., and his public acts were not always
calculated to promote social justice and universal brotherhood. But to
blame him for all the gilt furniture which has ever since stood around
the walls of hotel ballrooms and borne his name is a libel even on
that lax and luxurious monarch. Yet such is his fate. You who are
familiar with history, I who know next to nothing about it, are alike
in this--when we hear the words _Louis XIV_ we do not think of a great
monarch with a powdered wig and a powdered mistress, of magnificent
fountains and courtiers and ladies dancing the gavotte, of a brilliant
court and striking epoch. Not at all. We think, both of us, of a gilt
chair with a brocaded seat (slightly worn), and maybe a sofa to match.
If you say that you don't, I must politely but firmly--well, differ
with you.
Alas! poor Louis XIV was not the only worthy (or unworthy) of the past
who has come down to the present, not as a personality but as a piece
of furniture, a dog, a boot, or some other equally ignominious thing.
Speaking of furniture, there's the Morris chair. The man who made the
Morris chair was a great and good man--not because he made the Morris
chair, but in spite of it! He composed haunting poems, he wrote lovely
prose romances of the far-off days of knights and ladyes and magic
spells, such as that hight _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_, a right
brave book mayhap you have not perused, to your exceeding great loss,
for beautiful it is and fair to read and full of the mighty desire of
a man for a maid. Beside all this, he printed lovely books by other
writers, and designed wall-paper, and painted pictures, and thundered
against the deadening effect on men of mechanical toil, and in social
theories was far in advance of his age. Such a man was William
Morris--known to-day to the mass of mankind for one of the most
accursed articles of furniture ever devised by human ingenuity gone
astray! Every day, in a million homes, men and women sit in Morris
chairs (made by machinery) and read Robert W. Chambers and Florence
Barclay. Such, alas, is fame!
Then there was Queen Anne--in many respects an estimable woman, though
leaving much to be desired as a monarch. She had her Rooseveltian
virtues, being the mother of seventeen children (none of whom lived to
grow beyond infancy, to be sure); and she had what the world just now
has come to regard as the monarchical vice of autocracy. In her reign
science and literature flourished, though without much aid from her,
and the English court buzzed with intrigue and politics. But speak the
name _Queen Anne_ aloud, and then tell me the picture you get. Is it a
picture of the lady or her period? Is it a picture of Pope and Dryden
sitting in a London coffee-house? No, it is not--that is, unless you
are a very learned, or a very young, person. It is a picture of a
horrible architectural monstrosity built about thirty or forty years
ago in any American city or suburb, and bearing certain vague
resemblances to a home for human beings. Whatever else Queen Anne was,
she was not an architect, and she wasn't to blame for those houses,
any more than she was to blame for Pope's "Essay on Man." But that
doesn't count. She gets the blame, just the same. She is known
forever now by those gables and that gingerbread, those shingles and
stains.
She had a predecessor on the English throne by the name of Charles.
Like Louis in France, he wasn't all he should have been, and there
were those in his own day who didn't entirely approve of him. But it
wasn't because of his dogs. However, if you mention King Charles now,
it is a dog you think of--a small, eary dog, with somewhat splay feet
and a seventeenth-century monarchical preference for the society of
ladies and the softest cushion. Maybe the royal gentleman didn't
deserve anything better of posterity; but, anyhow, that's what he got.
St. Bernhard fared better. If one had to be remembered by a dog, what
better dog could he select, save possibly an Airedale? Big, strong,
faithful, wise, true to type for centuries, the most reliable of God's
creatures (including Man by courtesy in that category), the St.
Bernhard is a monument for--well, not for a king, and a king didn't
get him; for a saint, rather. It is doubtful if the old monk is
playing any lamentations on his harp.
But I'm not so sure about that peerless military leader, General A. E.
Burnside. When you have risen to lead an army corps against your
country's foes, when you have commanded men and sat your horse for a
statue on the grounds of the state capitol or the intersection of
Main and State Streets, it really is rather rough to be remembered for
your whiskers. Of course, as a wit remarked of Shaw, no man is
responsible for his relatives, but his whiskers are his own fault.
Nevertheless, how is a great general to know that his military
exploits will be forgotten, while his whiskers thunder down the ages,
as it were, progressing in the course of time with the changing
fashions from bank presidents to Presbyterian elders, and finally to
stage butlers? At last even the stage butlers are shaving clean, and a
stroke of the razor wipes out a military reputation, blasts a
general's immortality! Fame is a fickle jade.
An artistic reputation lasts longer, and resists the barber, proving
the superiority of the arts to militarism. "Van Dyke" is still a
generally familiar appellation and sounds the same, no matter which
way you spell it. Of course, there's no rhyme nor reason in it--artist
and whiskers should be spelled the same way. Only they're not.
"Something ought to be done about it." However, to resume.... If you
tell me John Jones has a Vandyke, I don't visualize John as an
art-collector standing in his gallery in rapt contemplation of a
masterpiece by the great Flemish painter. I visualize him as a man
with a certain type of beard. I may later think of the master who put
these beards upon his portraits. Then again, I may not. Exactly the
same would be true if I told you John Jones had a Vandyke, instead of
the other way about. Don't contradict me--you know it's so. It is
nearly as difficult to-day to own a Van Dyke canvas as it is to paint
one, but anybody can raise a Vandyke beard. In fact, many still do,
and thus keep the master's memory green. "By their whiskers ye shall
know them."
A military reputation, as we have already proved by the case of
General Burnside, is a precarious thing. How many patrons of Atlantic
City, I wonder, know the hero of the wars in the Low Countries and his
greatest triumph by a certain hotel on the Board Walk, and would be
hard put to say which half of the hyphenated name was the general and
which the battle? Then there was Wellington, who at one time
threatened to be remembered for his boots, and Blucher who still is
remembered for his. A certain Massachusetts statesman (anybody elected
to the Massachusetts House of Representatives is a statesman) once
said that the greatest triumph of Napoleon was when Theodore Roosevelt
stood silent at his tomb. This is witty, but like most witty sayings,
not quite true. It was a great triumph, of course, but rather
spectacular. The greatest triumphs are not showy. What actually proves
Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he is still remembered as a
commander after generations have selected from the tray of French
pastry the detectable and indigestible morsel of sugar, flour and lard
that bears his name. To have a toothsome article of food named after
you, and then to be still remembered for your actual achievements, is
the ultimate test of human greatness. Only a Napoleon can meet it.
Even Washington might not now be known as the father of his country if
his pie had been a better one.
Who was King, for instance? Was he the cook, or the man cooked for? I
fancy I knew once, but I have forgotten. But chicken-a-la-king will
live to perpetuate his name as long as there are chickens to be eaten
and men to eat them. Even Sardou, spectacular dramatist, for all his
_Toscas_ and _Fedoras_ (and ten to one you think of Fedora as a hat!),
lives for me, a dramatic critic, by virtue of eggs Victorien Sardou, a
never-to-be-too-much-enjoyed concoction secured at the old Brevoort
House in New York. He may actually have invented this recipe himself,
for he was a great lover of the pleasures of the table. If so, it was
his masterpiece. An egg is poached on the tender heart of an
artichoke, and garnished with a peculiar yellow sauce, topped with a
truffle. Around all four sides are laid little bunches of fresh
asparagus tips. What is _Tosca_ compared to this?
Then, of course, there was Mr. Baldwin. Who was Mr. Baldwin? The
people of Wilmington, Mass., know, because there is a monument to the
original tree in that town. But we don't know, any more than we know
who Mr. Bartlett was, when we eat one of his pears, or Mr. Logan,
father of the wine-red berry. In this case the Scripture is indeed
verified, that by their fruits shall ye know them.
Two or three times a year my wife gets certain clothes of mine from
the closet and combs them for moths, hangs them flapping in the breeze
for a while, and puts them back. Among the lot is a garment once much
worn by congressmen, church ushers and wedding guests, known to the
fashion editors as "frock coats", and to normal human beings as Prince
Alberts. Doubtless, in the flux of styles (like a pendulum, styles
swing forth and back again), the Prince Albert will once more be
correct, and my wife's labor will not have been in vain, while the
estimable consort of England's haircloth sofa and black-walnut bureau
queen will continue to be remembered of posterity by this outlandish
garment. Poor man, after all, he achieved little else to be remembered
by!
And as for the queen herself, she will be remembered by a state of
mind. Already "mid-Victorian" has little or nothing to do with
Victoria, and is losing its suggestion, even, of a time-period. It is
coming to stand for a mental and moral attitude--in fact, for
priggishness and moral timidity. Queen Victoria was a great and good
lady, and her home life was, as the two women so clearly pointed out
when they left the theatre, totally different from that of Cleopatra.
But she is going to give her name to a mental attitude, just the same,
even as the Philistines and the Puritans. It pays to pick the period
you queen it over rather carefully. Elizabeth had better luck. To be
Elizabethan is to be everything gay and dashing and out-doory and
adventuresome, with insatiable curiosity and the gift of song. Of
course, Shakespeare, Drake, Raleigh, ought to have the credit--but
they don't get it, any more than Tennyson comes in on the Victorian
discredit. The head that wears a crown may well lie uneasy.
The memory of many a man has been perpetuated, all unwittingly, by the
manufacturers and advertising agencies. Here I tread on dangerous
ground, but surely I shall not be accused of commercial collusion if I
point out that so "generously good" a philanthropist as George W.
Childs became a name literally in the mouth of thousands. He became a
cigar. Then there was Lord Lister. He, too, has become a name in the
mouths of thousands--as a mouth wash. And how about the only daughter
of the Prophet? Fatima was her name.
Who was Lord Raglan, or was he a lord? He is a kind of overcoat sleeve
now. Who was Mr. Mackintosh? Was it Lord Brougham, too? Gasolene has
extinguished his immortality. Gladstone has become a bag, Gainsborough
is a hat. The beautiful Madame Pompadour, beloved of kings, is a kind
of hair-cut now. The Mikado of Japan is a joke, set to music, heavenly
music, to be sure, but with its tongue in its angelic cheek. An
operetta did that. You cannot think of the Mikado of Japan in terms of
royal dignity. I defy you to try. Ko-ko and Katisha keep getting in
the way, and you hear the pitty-pat of Yum-Yum's little feet, and the
bounce of those elliptical billiard balls. Gilbert and Sullivan's
operetta is perhaps the most potent document for democracy since the
Communist Manifesto!
The other day I heard a woman say that she had got to begin banting. A
nice verb, to bant, though not approved of by the dictionary, which
scornfully terms it "humorous and colloquial". The humor, to be sure,
is usually for other people, not for the person banting. Do you know,
I wonder, the derivation of this word? It means, of course, to induce
this too, too solid flesh to melt, by the careful avoidance of
farinaceous, saccharine and oily foods, and occasionally its meaning
is stretched by the careless to include also rolling on the bedroom
floor fifteen times before breakfast, and standing up twenty minutes
after meals. Yet the word is derived from the name of William Banting,
who was a London cabinet-maker. Cabinet-making is a worthy trade;
indeed, it is one of the most appealing of all trades; in fact, it's
not a trade, it's an art. I haven't a doubt that William made splendid
furniture, especially chairs, for nobody appreciates a nice, roomy,
strong chair like a fat man. I haven't a doubt that it was his
ambition in life to be remembered for his furniture, even as the
brothers Adam, as Chippendale and Sheraton. But it was not to be. In
an unfortunate moment, William discovered that by eating fewer
potatoes and cutting out two lumps of sugar from his tea he could take
off some of the corpulence that troubled him. He told of his
discovery--and the world knows him now as a method of getting number
44 ladies into a perfect 38. I have always felt sorry for William
Banting. He is one of the tragic figures of history.
Of course, there are many more, if none other quite so poignant, but
you must recall them for yourself. For some paragraphs now I have been
working up to a climax of prophecy. I have been planning to predict
what Kaiser William II will be noted for in the days that are to come.
It seemed to me that would make rather a neat conclusion for this
little essay. But, Gentle Reader, I've got to turn that job over to
you, also. Not that the space is lacking, but after long and painful
concentration I have been unable to think of anything bad enough. It
may turn out that he will be known simply by the meek and nourishing
kaiser roll on the breakfast table--the only surviving relic of a
monarchical vocabulary in a peaceful and democratic universe. Perhaps,
for him, that would be the bitterest fate of all, the ultimate irony.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_The Old House on the Bend_
I wonder if other wayfarers through New England greet, as I do, with
special affection the old house on the bend of the road? It is so
characteristic of an earlier civilization, so suggestive of a vanished
epoch--and withal so picturesque! Even if you are unfortunate enough
to "tour" in a motor-car, which of course is far from the ideal way to
savor the countryside, still you cannot miss the old house on the
bend, even though you do miss the feel of the land, the rise and dip
of the road, the fragrance of the clematis by the wall, the already
fading gold of the evening primroses when you start off after
breakfast.
Even for a motorist, however, the old house on the bend stands up to
view, especially if you are on the front seat with the driver. The car
swings into a straightaway, lined, perhaps, with sugar-maples and gray
stone walls. Between the trunks are vistas of the green fields and far
hills. But the chief vista is up the white perspective of the road,
which seems to vanish directly into the front door of the solid,
mouse-gray house on the bend.
The ribbon of road rushes toward you, as if a great spool under your
wheels were winding it up. The house rushes on with it; grows nearer;
details emerge. You see the great square chimney; the tiny
window-panes, six to a sash, some of them turned by time, not into the
purple of Beacon Hill but into a kind of prismatic sheen like oil on
water; the bit of classic egg-and-dart border on the door-cap; the
aged texture of the weathered clapboard; the graceful arch of the wide
woodshed entrance, on the kitchen side; the giant elm rising far above
the roof. You rush on so near to the house, indeed, that the car seems
in imminent danger of colliding with the front door, when suddenly the
wheels bite the road, you feel the pull of centrifugal force, and the
car swings away at right angles, leaving an end view of the ancient
dwelling behind you, so that when you turn for a final glance you see
the long slant of the roof at the rear, going down within six or eight
feet of the ground.
Such is the view from the motor-car. If you are traveling on foot,
however, there is much more to be observed, such as the great doorstep
made from a broken millstone, the gigantic rambler by the kitchen
window, the tiger-lilies gone wild in the dooryard, and above all, the
view from the front windows. Since the house was visible far up the
road, conversely a long stretch of the road is visible from the house.
Standing in front of it, you can see a motor or wagon approaching a
mile away, and from the end windows, too, can be seen all approaching
vehicles from the other angle. Moreover, if you lived within, you
could not only see who was coming, but you could step out of your door
a pace or two and converse with him as he passed. The old house is
strategically placed.
When it was built, a century or even a century and a half ago, no
motors went by on that road, and not enough of any kind of traffic to
raise a dust. The busy town to the south, the summer resort to the
north, were alike small villages, given over to agriculture. There
were no telephones, no newspapers even. Fortunate indeed was the man
whose farm abutted on a bend, for there he could set his house, close
to the road, viewing the approaches in either direction, and no
traveler could get by him, or at any rate by his wife, without
yielding the latest gossip from the town above or below, perhaps from
the greater world beyond. The highroad was then the sole artery of
commerce, of communication, of intercourse of man with man.
How neighborly was the house on the bend, shedding its parlor-candle
rays like a beacon by night down the mile of straightaway, or flapping
its chintz curtains in the June sunshine! What a testimony it is, in
its present gray ruin, to the human hunger for news and gossip and
friendliness!
The old order has changed, indeed. We no longer build on the bend. We
don't have bends if we can help it. They are dangerous and hard to
maintain. A house on one would be uninhabitable with the dust. We do
not seek the neighborliness of the road, but retire as far as we can
to the back of our lot, with our telephone and newspaper. The old
house on the bend now stands deserted. From country estates dimly seen
in their remote privacy of trees and gardens, the stone highway leads
to other estates equally remote and scornful of publicity. Between
them the motors rush. The old house is dusty and falling into ruin,
and every passing car kicks up some bit of crushed stone into its
tangled dooryard. It looks pathetically down the road with unseeing
eyes, the last relic of a vanishing order.
[Illustration]
_Concerning Hat-trees_
It is well sometimes, when we are puffed up with our achievements as a
race,--our conquest of the elements, our building of mighty bridges
and lofty sky-scrapers, our invention of wireless telegraphy and
horseless carriages and aeroplanes and machine guns and secret
diplomacy and wage slavery and war,--it is well to indulge in the
chastening reflection that there are still some things we cannot
achieve. We may reflect that the appleless Eden has not yet been
discovered, or that the actor without vanity is yet unborn, or the
"treasonless" Senate yet unassembled. My own method is to reflect that
the ideal hat-tree has never been constructed.
At present I have no hat-tree, because I live in an old farm house
where there is a square piano and a hall closet, and we don't need
one. In New York I never had one, either, because there is never room
in the hall-way of a modern apartment both for a hat-tree and a
passage-way. But occasionally I visit at the homes of friends who
boast one of these arboreal adornments, and renew my acquaintance
with the species. I was to take a walk with one of these friends the
other day.
"Wait," he said, pausing in the hall, "till I get a pair of gloves."
Stooping over, he pulled at the hat-tree drawer. First it stuck on one
side; then it stuck on the other side; then it yielded altogether,
without warning. My friend sat down on the floor, the ridiculously
shallow drawer in his hand, between his feet a sorry array of the odds
and ends of the outside toilet,--broken hat pins, old veils, buttons,
winter gloves rolled into wads, old gloves, new gloves, gloves pulled
off in a hurry with the fingers inside out, dirty white gloves
belonging to his charming sister. I turned away, feeling that I gazed
on a domestic exposure. My friend spoke softly to the drawer.
"Sh!" said I, "your family! Put the drawer back."
"I will not put it back," he said. "We would never get started. Let
the--"
Again I cautioned him, and we set out on our walk leaving the litter
on the floor; and as we tramped through the marvelous sky-scraper
wilderness which is Manhattan, we talked of hat-trees, and the
futility of human effort, and sighed for a new Carlyle to write the
philosophy of the hat-tree drawer.
How well I remembered the hat-tree that sheltered my caps in youth,
beneath the protecting foliage of the paternal greatcoat and the
maternal bonnet! I did not always use it; the piano was more
convenient, or the floor. But there it stood in the hall in all its
black-walnut impressive ugliness, with side racks for umbrellas, and
square, metal drip-pans always full of the family rubbers. There was a
mirror in the centre, so high I had to climb three stairs to see how
uncle's hat fitted my small head. There were pegs up both sides; but,
as is the way with hat-trees, only the top ones were useful; whatever
was hung on them buried everything below. The only really safe place
was the peak on top, just above the carved face of Minerva. Sometimes
the paternal greatcoat lovingly carried off the maternal shawl of a
morning, which would be found later somewhere between the door and the
station. And this hat-tree also had a drawer, of course. There was the
rub, indeed!
Summer or winter, wet or dry, that drawer always stuck. It had but one
handle,--a ring in the middle. First one side would come out too far,
and you would knock it back and pull again. Then the other side would
come out too far, and you would knock that back. Then both sides, by
diabolical agreement, would suddenly work as on greased ways, and you
stood with an astonishingly shallow drawer dangling from your finger,
its long-accumulated contents spread on the floor. The shock usually
sent down two derbies and a bonnet to add to the confusion. When you
had gathered up the litter and stuffed it back, wondering how so small
a space ever held so much, the still harder task confronted you of
putting the drawer in its grooves again. Sometimes you succeeded; more
often you left it "for mother to do"--that depended on your temper and
the time of your train. The drawer was a charnel-house of gloves and
mittens and veils. When you cut your finger you were sent to it to get
a "cot", and it had a peculiar smell of its own, the smell of the
hat-tree drawer. A whiff of old gloves still brings that odor back to
me, out of childhood, stirring memories of little garments worn long
ago, of a great blue cape that was a pride to my father's heart and a
wound to my mother's pride,--but most of all of lost temper and
incipient profanity caused by the baulky drawer.
My friend's recollections but supplemented and reinforced my own. We
called to mind other hat-trees in houses where we had visited, and one
and all they were alike perverse, ridiculous, ill-adapted for their
mission in life. We thought of various substitutes for the hat-tree,
such as a pole with pegs in it, which tips over when the preponderance
of weight is hung on one side; the cluster of pegs on a frame
suspended from the wall like a picture, while a painted drain-pipe
courts umbrellas in a corner; a long, low table (only possible in a
palatial hall) on which the garments are placed by the butler in
assorted piles, so that you feel like asking him for a check; the
settle, often disastrous to hats. We found none of them satisfactory,
though they eliminate the perils of the drawer.
Only the wooden pegs which were driven in a horizontal row into the
board walls of grandfather's back entry ever approximated the ideal.
But such a reversion to primitive principles would now be considered
out of the question, even in my farm house--by the farmer's wife, at
least. The problem of a satisfactory hat-tree, which baffled the
genius of Chippendale, is still unsolved in Grand Rapids, and it
probably will remain unsolved to the end of time, unless Eden should
be found again, where the hat-tree is the least of the arboreal
troubles.
[Illustration]
_The Shrinking of Kingman's Field_
"It was rats," said I.
"It was warts," said Old Hundred.
"I know it was rats, I tell you," I continued, "because my uncle Eben
knew a man who did it. His house was full of rats, so he wrote a very
polite note to them, setting forth that, much as he enjoyed their
excellent society, the house was too crowded for comfort, and telling
them to go over to the house of a certain neighbor, who had more room
and no children nor cats. And the rats all went."
Old Hundred listened patiently. "That's precisely right," said he,
"except it must have been warts. You have to be polite, and also tell
them where to go. You rub the warts with a bean, wrap the bean up in
the note, and burn both, or else throw them in the well. In a few days
the warts will leave you and appear on the other fellow. My
grandfather, when he was a boy, got warts that way, so he licked the
other boy."
"Rats!" said I.
"No, warts," persisted Old Hundred.
So that was how we two aging and urbanized codgers came to leave the
comfortable club for the Grand Central Station, whence we sent
telegrams to our families and took train for the rural regions
north-eastward. The point had to be settled. Besides, I stumped Old
Hundred to go, and he never could refuse a stump.
But Old Hundred was fretful on the journey. We called him Old Hundred
years ago, because he always proposed that tune at Sunday evening
meetings, when the leader "called for hymns." I address him as Old
Hundred still, though he is a learned lawyer in line for a judgeship.
He was fretful, he said, because we were sure to be terribly
disillusioned. But he is not a man accustomed in these later years to
act on impulse, and the prospect of a night on a sleeping car, without
pajamas, did not, I fancy, appeal to him, now that he faced it from
the badly ventilated car aisle, instead of the club easy-chair. Yet
perhaps he did dread the disillusionment, too. It was always I, even
when we were boys, who loved an adventure for its own sake, quite
apart from the pleasure or pain of it--taking a supreme delight, in
fact, in melancholy. I have still a copy of Moore's poems, stained
with tears and gingerbread. Some of the happiest hours of my childhood
were spent in weeping over this book, especially over "Go Where Glory
Waits Thee," which affected me with an incomprehensible but poignant
woe. Accordingly it was I who rose cheerful in the morning and piloted
a gloomy companion to breakfast and a barber, and so across Boston to
the dingy station where dingy, dirty cars of ancient vintage awaited,
and in one of which we rode, with innumerable stops, to a spot off the
beaten tracks of travel, but which bore a name that thrilled us.
When we alighted from the train, a large factory greeted our vision,
across the road from the railway station. We walked up a faintly
familiar street to the village square. There we paused, with wry
faces. Six trolley lines converged in its centre, and out of the
surrounding country were rolling in great cars, as big almost as
Pullmans. All the magnificent horse-chestnut trees that once lined the
walks were down, to expose more brazenly to view the rows of tawdry
little shops. These trees had once furnished shade and ammunition. I
had to smile at the sign above the new fish-market--