In the city that we like to call the metropolis, the newspapers enable
us to begin every day with the knowledge that yesterday Mr. and Mrs.
A. entertained at dinner Messieurs and Mesdames B., C., D., E., F.,
G., H., I., and J. And why is this precious knowledge imparted to us?
Why are we not also taught what else they did during the day? Why do
we learn nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Y. and Z., at the other end of the
alphabet, in Baxter Street? For these good folks who are mentioned are
in no way distinguished except for riches. If, indeed, they had done
or said or written anything memorable, if they had painted fine
pictures, or carved statues of mark, or designed noble buildings, or
composed beautiful music; if they had effected humane reforms, had
happily cheered or refined or enriched human life, or in any way had
made the world better and men and women happier, the curiosity to hear
of them, and to see them, and to read of their daily course of life,
would be as intelligible as the pleasure in seeing the birthplace of
Burns, or walking in Anne Hathaway's garden, or hearing of Abraham
Lincoln, or seeing Washington's bedstead and sitting in his chair.
But to read day after day in the paper, this golden domesday-book, the
lists of rich people who ate terrapin together, or danced together in
lace frills and white cravats afterwards, and to read it with avidity,
is what might be done in some world of satire. But in a hard-working,
sensible, Yankee world! You might say that nobody does read it, but
the column of the newspaper which is devoted to this narrative,
contrasted with the few paragraphs in which the important news from
all parts of the globe is discussed, refutes you. The newspaper
understands itself. It is a shrewd merchant who supplies the demand in
the market.
But is there no other than a humiliating explanation of the fact? Is
it only snobbishness, a mean admiration of mean things? Are we all
essentially lackeys who love to wear a livery? Or is it not
rather--all this interest in the small performances of those who, if
distinguished for nothing else, are the distinguished favorites of
fortune--the result of the ceaseless aspiration for a better
condition, and the instinct of the imagination to decorate our lives
with the vision of a fairer circumstance than our own, and to revenge
the tyranny of fate by the hope of heaven? If the fine Titania could
sing to Bottom,
"Mine ear is much enamored of thy note,
...
Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful,"
why should not our liberal fancy sing the same song to the Four
Hundred? They may be deftly enchanted to our eyes if to no others, and
to our view our Bottom also be translated.
It is not what they are, but what we believe them to be, of which we
read in the newspaper. The poor sewing-girl, as she stitches her life
away "in poverty, hunger, and dirt," seeing unconsciously the fairy
texture and costly delicacy of the robe she fashions, follows it in
fancy to the form which is to wear it, and which to that fancy must
needs be that of a most lovely and most gracious woman, because none
other would that soft splendor of raiment befit. The lofty and
benignant lady must needs also mate with her kind, and move only among
those "learn'd and fair and good as she." All the circumstance of life
must conform, and amid light and perfume and music the unspeakable
hours of such women, such men, glide by.--The girl's head droops. For
one brief moment she dreams, and that charmed life is real.
In a less degree, in our prosaic and plodding daily routine, we invest
the life of the favorites of fortune with an ideal charm. It is, to
our fond fancy, all that it might be. Those figures are not what
Circe's wand might disclose. They are gods and goddesses feasting, and
in happier moments we feign ourselves possible Ixions to be admitted
to the celestial banquet. In the streets of the summer city their
palaces are closed, their brilliant equipages are gone; they do not
sparkle and murmur in their opera boxes, nor roll stately in slow
lines along the trimmed avenues of the Park. But still the celestial
life proceeds, a little out of sight, its lovely leisure brimmed with
deeds becoming those who have no care but to do good and to
transfigure their own fair fortune into a blessing for the world. We
read the gross details of dress and dinner. But they remind us only
more keenly of the ample resource, the boundless opportunity which our
favorites of fortune enjoy.
Thus, Orestes, we ponder the society column not because we are snobs,
but because our imaginations take fire; the dry narrowness and hard
conditions of our lives are soothed as we contemplate those who have
no excuse not to be benefactors; and what they should be, our
imaginations, benevolent to ourselves, assure us that they are.