country, try to start a "village improvement society," and experience, as
others have done, the apathy and ill-will of the inhabitants when you go
about among them and strive to summon some of their local pride to your
aid.
In the town near which I pass my summers, a large stone, fallen from a
passing dray, lay for days in the middle of the principal street, until I
paid some boys to remove it. No one cared, and the dull-eyed inhabitants
would doubtless be looking at it still but for my impatience.
One would imagine the villagers were all on the point of moving away (and
they generally are, if they can sell their land), so little interest do
they show in your plans. Like all people who have fallen into bad
habits, they have grown to love their slatternly ways and cling to them,
resenting furiously any attempt to shake them up to energy and reform.
The farmer has not, however, a monopoly. Slouch seems ubiquitous. Our
railway and steam-boat systems have tried in vain to combat it, and
supplied their employees with a livery (I beg the free and independent
voter's pardon, a uniform!), with but little effect. The inherent
tendency is too strong for the corporations. The conductors still
shuffle along in their spotted garments, the cap on the back of the head,
and their legs anywhere, while they chew gum in defiance of the whole
Board of Directors.
Go down to Washington, after a visit to the Houses of Parliament or the
Chamber of Deputies, and observe the contrast between the bearing of our
Senators and Representatives and the air of their _confreres_ abroad. Our
law-makers seem trying to avoid every appearance of "smartness." Indeed,
I am told, so great is the prejudice in the United States against a well-
turned-out man that a candidate would seriously compromise his chances of
election who appeared before his constituents in other than the
accustomed shabby frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, no
gloves, as much doubtfully white shirt-front as possible, and a wisp of
black silk for a tie; and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker, his
chances of election are materially increased.
Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our native _laisser aller_ so much
as a well-brushed hat and shining boots. When abroad, it is easy to spot
a compatriot as soon and as far as you can see one, by his graceless
gait, a cross between a lounge and a shuffle. In reading-, or dining-
room, he is the only man whose spine does not seem equal to its work, so
he flops and straggles until, for the honor of your land, you long to
shake him and set him squarely on his legs.
No amount of reasoning can convince me that outward slovenliness is not a
sign of inward and moral supineness. A neglected exterior generally
means a lax moral code. The man who considers it too much trouble to sit
erect can hardly have given much time to his tub or his toilet. Having
neglected his clothes, he will neglect his manners, and between morals
and manners we know the tie is intimate.
In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated by the construction of a
mosque. Vast expense is incurred to make it as splendid as possible.
But, once completed, it is never touched again. Others are built by
succeeding sovereigns, but neither thought nor treasure is ever expended
on the old ones. When they can no longer be used, they are abandoned,
and fall into decay. The same system seems to prevail among our private
owners and corporations. Streets are paved, lamp-posts erected, store-
fronts carefully adorned, but from the hour the workman puts his
finishing touch upon them they are abandoned to the hand of fate. The
mud may cake up knee-deep, wind and weather work their own sweet will, it
is no one's business to interfere.
When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning to watch
Paris making its toilet. The streets are taking a bath, liveried
attendants are blacking the boots of the lamp-posts and
newspaper-_kiosques_, the shop-fronts are being shaved and having their
hair curled, cafe's and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and tying
their cravats smartly before their many mirrors. By the time the world
is up and about, the whole city, smiling freshly from its matutinal tub,
is ready to greet it gayly.
It is this attention to detail that gives to Continental cities their air
of cheerfulness and thrift, and the utter lack of it that impresses
foreigners so painfully on arriving at our shores.
It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude and his high collar, at the
darky in his master's cast-off clothes, aping style and fashion. Better
the dude, better the colored dandy, better even the Bowery "tough" with
his affected carriage, for they at least are reaching blindly out after
something better than their surroundings, striving after an ideal, and
are in just so much the superiors of the foolish souls who mock
them--better, even misguided efforts, than the ignoble stagnant quagmire
of slouch into which we seem to be slowly descending.
No. 9--Social Suggestion
The question of how far we are unconsciously influenced by people and
surroundings, in our likes and dislikes, our opinions, and even in our
pleasures and intimate tastes, is a delicate and interesting one, for the
line between success and failure in the world, as on the stage or in most
of the professions, is so narrow and depends so often on what humor one's
"public" happen to be in at a particular moment, that the subject is
worthy of consideration.
Has it never happened to you, for instance, to dine with friends and go
afterwards in a jolly humor to the play which proved so delightful that
you insist on taking your family immediately to see it; when to your
astonishment you discover that it is neither clever nor amusing, on the
contrary rather dull. Your family look at you in amazement and wonder
what you had seen to admire in such an asinine performance. There was a
case of suggestion! You had been influenced by your friends and had
shared their opinions. The same thing occurs on a higher scale when one
is raised out of one's self by association with gifted and original
people, a communion with more cultivated natures which causes you to
discover and appreciate a thousand hidden beauties in literature, art or
music that left to yourself, you would have failed to notice. Under
these circumstances you will often be astonished at the point and
piquancy of your own conversation. This is but too true of a number of
subjects.
We fondly believe our opinions and convictions to be original, and with
innocent conceit, imagine that we have formed them for ourselves. The
illusion of being unlike other people is a common vanity. Beware of the
man who asserts such a claim. He is sure to be a bore and will serve up
to you, as his own, a muddle of ideas and opinions which he has absorbed
like a sponge from his surroundings.
No place is more propitious for studying this curious phenomenon, than
behind the scenes of a theatre, the last few nights before a first
performance. The whole company is keyed up to a point of mutual
admiration that they are far from feeling generally. "The piece is
charming and sure to be a success." The author and the interpreters of
his thoughts are in complete communion. The first night comes. The
piece is a failure! Drop into the greenroom then and you will find an
astonishing change has taken place. The Star will take you into a corner
and assert that, she "always knew the thing could not go, it was too
imbecile, with such a company, it was folly to expect anything else." The
author will abuse the Star and the management. The whole troupe is
frankly disconcerted, like people aroused out of a hypnotic sleep,
wondering what they had seen in the play to admire.
In the social world we are even more inconsistent, accepting with
tameness the most astonishing theories and opinions. Whole circles will
go on assuring each other how clever Miss So-and-So is, or, how beautiful
they think someone else. Not because these good people are any cleverer,
or more attractive than their neighbors, but simply because it is in the
air to have these opinions about them. To such an extent does this hold
good, that certain persons are privileged to be vulgar and rude, to say
impertinent things and make remarks that would ostracize a less fortunate
individual from the polite world for ever; society will only smilingly
shrug its shoulders and say: "It is only Mr. So-and-So's way." It is
useless to assert that in cases like these, people are in possession of
their normal senses. They are under influences of which they are
perfectly unconscious.
Have you ever seen a piece guyed? Few sadder sights exist, the human
being rarely getting nearer the brute than when engaged in this
amusement. Nothing the actor or actress can do will satisfy the public.
Men who under ordinary circumstances would be incapable of insulting a
woman, will whistle and stamp and laugh, at an unfortunate girl who is
doing her utmost to amuse them. A terrible example of this was given two
winters ago at one of our concert halls, when a family of Western singers
were subjected to absolute ill-treatment at the hands of the public. The
young girls were perfectly sincere, in their rude way, but this did not
prevent men from offering them every insult malice could devise, and
making them a target for every missile at hand. So little does the
public think for itself in cases like this, that at the opening of the
performance had some well-known person given the signal for applause, the
whole audience would, in all probability, have been delighted and made
the wretched sisters a success.
In my youth it was the fashion to affect admiration for the Italian
school of painting and especially for the great masters of the
Renaissance. Whole families of perfectly inartistic English and
Americans might then he heard conscientiously admiring the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel or Leonardo's Last Supper (Botticelli had not been
invented then) in the choicest guide-book language.
When one considers the infinite knowledge of technique required to
understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of the Renaissance and
to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of their creations, one asks one's
self in wonder what our parents admired in those paintings, and what
tempted them to bring home and adorn their houses with such dreadful
copies of their favorites. For if they appreciated the originals they
never would have bought the copies, and if the copies pleased them, they
must have been incapable of enjoying the originals. Yet all these people
thought themselves perfectly sincere. To-day you will see the same thing
going on before the paintings of Claude Monet and Besnard, the same
admiration expressed by people who, you feel perfectly sure, do not
realize why these works of art are superior and can no more explain to
you why they think as they do than the sheep that follow each other
through a hole in a wall, can give a reason for their actions.
Dress and fashion in clothes are subjects above all others, where the
ineptitude of the human mind is most evident. Can it be explained in any
other way, why the fashions of yesterday always appear so hideous to
us,--almost grotesque? Take up an old album of photographs and glance
over the faded contents. Was there ever anything so absurd? Look at the
top hats men wore, and at the skirts of the women!
The mother of a family said to me the other day: "When I recall the way
in which girls were dressed in my youth, I wonder how any of us ever got
a husband."
Study a photograph of the Empress Eugenie, that supreme arbiter of
elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped skirts! That awful India
shawl pinned off the shoulders, and the bonnet perched on a roll of hair
in the nape of the neck! What were people thinking of at that time? Were
they lunatics to deform in this way the beautiful lines of the human body
which it should be the first object of toilet to enhance, or were they
only lacking in the artistic sense? Nothing of the kind. And what is
more, they were convinced that the real secret of beauty in dress had
been discovered by them; that past fashions were absurd, and that the
future could not improve on their creations. The sculptors and painters
of that day (men of as great talent as any now living), were enthusiastic
in reproducing those monstrosities in marble or on canvas, and authors
raved about the ideal grace with which a certain beauty draped her shawl.
Another marked manner in which we are influenced by circumambient
suggestion, is in the transient furore certain games and pastimes create.
We see intelligent people so given over to this influence as barely to
allow themselves time to eat and sleep, begrudging the hours thus stolen
from their favorite amusement.
Ten years ago, tennis occupied every moment of our young people's time;
now golf has transplanted tennis in public favor, which does not prove,
however, that the latter is the better game, but simply that compelled by
the accumulated force of other people's opinions, youths and maidens, old
duffers and mature spinsters are willing to pass many hours daily in all
kinds of weather, solemnly following an indian-rubber ball across ten-
acre lots.
If you suggest to people who are laboring under the illusion they are
amusing themselves that the game, absorbing so much of their attention,
is not as exciting as tennis nor as clever in combinations as croquet,
that in fact it would be quite as amusing to roll an empty barrel several
times around a plowed field, they laugh at you in derision and instantly
put you down in their profound minds as a man who does not understand
"sport."
Yet these very people were tennis-mad twenty years ago and had night come
to interrupt a game of croquet would have ordered lanterns lighted in
order to finish the match so enthralling were its intricacies.
Everybody has known how to play _Bezique_ in this country for years, yet
within the last eighteen months, whole circles of our friends have been
seized with a midsummer madness and willingly sat glued to a card-table
through long hot afternoons and again after dinner until day dawned on
their folly.
Certain _Memoires_ of Louis Fifteenth's reign tell of an "unravelling"
mania that developed at his court. It began by some people fraying out
old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads from worn-out stuffs;
this occupation soon became the rage, nothing could restrain the delirium
of destruction, great ladies tore priceless tapestries from their walls
and brocades from their furniture, in order to unravel those materials
and as the old stock did not suffice for the demand thousands were spent
on new brocades and velvets, which were instantly destroyed,
entertainments were given where unravelling was the only amusement
offered, the entire court thinking and talking of nothing else for
months.
What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this? Simply that
people do not see with their eyes or judge with their understandings;
that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient suggestion, at times envelops
us taking from people all free will, and replacing it with the taste and
judgment of the moment.
The number of people is small in each generation, who are strong enough
to rise above their surroundings and think for themselves. The rest are
as dry leaves on a stream. They float along and turn gayly in the
eddies, convinced all the time (as perhaps are the leaves) that they act
entirely from their own volition and that their movements are having a
profound influence on the direction and force of the current.
No. 10--Bohemia
Lunching with a talented English comedian and his wife the other day, the
conversation turned on Bohemia, the evasive no-man's-land that Thackeray
referred to, in so many of his books, and to which he looked back
lovingly in his later years, when, as he said, he had forgotten the road
to Prague.
The lady remarked: "People have been more than kind to us here in New
York. We have dined and supped out constantly, and have met with
gracious kindness, such as we can never forget. But so far we have not
met a single painter, or author, or sculptor, or a man who has explored a
corner of the earth. Neither have we had the good luck to find ourselves
in the same room with Tesla or Rehan, Edison or Drew. We shall regret so
much when back in England and are asked about your people of talent,
being obliged to say, 'We never met any of them.' Why is it? We have
not been in any one circle, and have pitched our tents in many cities,
during our tours over here, but always with the same result. We read
your American authors as much as, if not more than, our own. The names
of dozens of your discoverers and painters are household words in
England. When my husband planned his first tour over here my one idea
was, 'How nice it will be! Now I shall meet those delightful people of
whom I have heard so much.' The disappointment has been complete. Never
one have I seen."
I could not but feel how all too true were the remarks of this
intelligent visitor, remembering how quick the society of London is to
welcome a new celebrity or original character, how a place is at once
made for him at every hospitable board, a permanent one to which he is
expected to return; and how no Continental entertainment is considered
complete without some bright particular star to shine in the firmament.
"Lion-hunting," I hear my reader say with a sneer. That may be, but it
makes society worth the candle, which it rarely is over here. I realized
what I had often vaguely felt before, that the Bohemia the English lady
was looking for was not to be found in this country, more's the pity. Not
that the elements are lacking. Far from it, (for even more than in
London should we be able to combine such a society), but perhaps from a
misconception of the true idea of such a society, due probably to Henry
Murger's dreary book _Scenes de la vie de Boheme_ which is chargeable
with the fact that a circle of this kind evokes in the mind of most
Americans visions of a scrubby, poorly-fed and less-washed community, a
world they would hardly dare ask to their tables for fear of some
embarrassing unconventionality of conduct or dress.
Yet that can hardly be the reason, for even in Murger or Paul de Kock, at
their worst, the hero is still a gentleman, and even when he borrows a
friend's coat, it is to go to a great house and among people of rank.
Besides, we are becoming too cosmopolitan, and wander too constantly over
this little globe, not to have learned that the Bohemia of 1830 is as
completely a thing of the past as a _grisette_ or a glyphisodon. It
disappeared with Gavarni and the authors who described it. Although we
have kept the word, its meaning has gradually changed until it has come
to mean something difficult to define, a will-o'-the-wisp, which one
tries vainly to grasp. With each decade it has put on a new form and
changed its centre, the one definite fact being that it combines the
better elements of several social layers.
Drop in, if you are in Paris and know the way, at one of Madeleine
Lemaire's informal evenings in her studio. There you may find the Prince
de Ligne, chatting with Rejane or Coquelin; or Henri d'Orleans, just back
from an expedition into Africa. A little further on, Saint-Saens will be
running over the keys, preparing an accompaniment for one of Madame de
Tredern's songs. The Princess Mathilde (that passionate lover of art)
will surely be there, and--but it is needless to particularize.
Cross the Channel, and get yourself asked to one of Irving's choice
suppers after the play. You will find the bar, the stage, and the pulpit
represented there, a "happy family" over which the "Prince" often
presides, smoking cigar after cigar, until the tardy London daylight
appears to break up the entertainment.
For both are centres where the gifted and the travelled meet the great of
the social world, on a footing of perfect equality, and where, if any
prestige is accorded, it is that of brains. When you have seen these
places and a dozen others like them, you will realize what the actor's
wife had in her mind.
Now, let me whisper to you why I think such circles do not exist in this
country. In the first place, we are still too provincial in this big
city of ours. New York always reminds me of a definition I once heard of
California fruit: "Very large, with no particular flavor." We are like a
boy, who has had the misfortune to grow too quickly and look like a man,
but whose mind has not kept pace with his body. What he knows is
undigested and chaotic, while his appearance makes you expect more of him
than he can give--hence disappointment.
Our society is yet in knickerbockers, and has retained all sorts of
littlenesses and prejudices which older civilizations have long since
relegated to the mental lumber room. An equivalent to this point of view
you will find in England or France only in the smaller "cathedral"
cities, and even there the old aristocrats have the courage of their
opinions. Here, where everything is quite frankly on a money basis, and
"positions" are made and lost like a fortune, by a turn of the market,
those qualities which are purely mental, and on which it is hard to put a
practical value, are naturally at a discount. We are quite ready to pay
for the best. Witness our private galleries and the opera, but we say,
like the parvenu in Emile Augier's delightful comedy _Le Gendre de M.
Poirier_, "Patronize art? Of course! But the artists? Never!" And
frankly, it would be too much, would it not, to expect a family only half
a generation away from an iron foundry, or a mine, to be willing to
receive Irving or Bernhardt on terms of perfect equality?
As it would be unjust to demand a mature mind in the overgrown boy, it is
useless to hope for delicate tact and social feeling from the parvenu. To
be gracious and at ease with all classes and professions, one must be
perfectly sure of one's own position, and with us few feel this security,
it being based on too frail a foundation, a crisis in the "street" going
a long way towards destroying it.
Of course I am generalizing and doubt not that in many cultivated homes
the right spirit exists, but unfortunately these are not the centres
which give the tone to our "world." Lately at one of the most splendid
houses in this city a young Italian tenor had been engaged to sing. When
he had finished he stood alone, unnoticed, unspoken to for the rest of
the evening. He had been paid to sing. "What more, in common sense,
could he want?" thought the "world," without reflecting that it was
probably not the _tenor_ who lost by that arrangement. It needs a
delicate hand to hold the reins over the backs of such a fine-mouthed
community as artists and singers form. They rarely give their best when
singing or performing in a hostile atmosphere.
A few years ago when a fancy-dress ball was given at the Academy of
Design, the original idea was to have it an artists' ball; the community
of the brush were, however, approached with such a complete lack of tact
that, with hardly an exception, they held aloof, and at the ball shone
conspicuous by their absence.
At present in this city I know of but two hospitable firesides where you
are sure to meet the best the city holds of either foreign or native
talent. The one is presided over by the wife of a young composer, and
the other, oddly enough, by two unmarried ladies. An invitation to a
dinner or a supper at either of these houses is as eagerly sought after
and as highly prized in the great world as it is by the Bohemians, though
neither "salon" is open regularly.
There is still hope for us, and I already see signs of better things.
Perhaps, when my English friend returns in a few years, we may be able to
prove to her that we have found the road to Prague.
No. 11--Social Exiles