I AM INTRODUCED INTO SOCIETY.
Bolton and I were sitting, up to our ears in new books which had been
accumulating for notice for days past, and which I was turning over and
dipping into here and there with the jaded, half-disgusted air of a
child worn out by the profusion of a Thanksgiving dinner.
"I feel perfectly savage," I said. "What a never-ending harvest of
trash! Two, or at the most, three tolerable ideas, turned and twisted in
some novel device, got up in large print, with wide margins--and,
behold, a modern book! I would like to be a black frost and nip them all
in a night!"
"Your dinner didn't agree with you, apparently," said Bolton, as he
looked up from a new scientific work he was patiently analyzing, making
careful notes along the margin; "however, turn those books over to Jim,
who understands the hop, skip, and jump style of criticism. Jim has
about a dozen or two of blank forms that only need the name of the book
and publisher inserted, and the work is done."
"What a perfect farce," said I.
"The notices are as good as the books," said Bolton. "Something has to
be said to satisfy the publishers and do the handsome thing by them; and
the usual string of commendatory phrases and trite criticism, which mean
nothing in particular, I presume imposes upon nobody. It is merely a
form of announcing that such and such wares are in the market. I fancy
they have very little influence on public opinion."
"But do you think," said I, "that there is any hope of a just school of
book criticism--something that should be a real guide to buyers and
readers, and a real instruction to writers?"
"That is a large question," said Bolton, "and a matter beset with
serious difficulties. While books are a matter of commerce and trade;
while magazines which criticise books are the property of booksellers,
and newspapers depend on them for advertising patronage, it is too much
to expect of human nature, that we should always get wholly honest,
unbiassed opinions. Then, again, there is the haste, and rush, and hurry
of our times, the amount of literary drift-wood that is all the while
accumulating! Editors and critics are but mortal men, and men kept, as a
general thing, in the last agonies of weariness and boredom. There is
not, for the most part, sensibility enough left to enable them to read
through or enter into the purport of one book in a hundred; yet, for all
this, you do observe here and there in the columns of our best papers
carefully studied and seriously written critiques on books; these are
hopeful signs. They show a conscientious effort on the part of the
writers to enter into the spirit of the work, and to give their readers
a fair account of it; and, if I mistake not, the number of such is on
the increase."
"Well," said I, "do you suppose there is any prospect or possibility of
a _constructive_ school of criticism--honest, yet kindly and
sympathetic, that shall lead young authors into right methods of
perfecting themselves?"
"We have a long while to wait before that comes," said Bolton. "Who is
appreciative and many-sided enough to guide the first efforts of genius
just coming to consciousness? How many could profitably have advised
Hawthorne when his peculiar Rembrandt style was just forming? As a race,
we Anglo Saxons are so self-sphered that we lack the power to enter into
the individuality of another mind, and give profitable advice for its
direction.
"English criticism has generally been unappreciative and brutal; it has
dissected butterflies and humming-birds with mallet and cleaver--witness
the review that murdered Keats, and witness in the letters of Charlotte
Bronté the perplexity into which sensitive, conscientious genius was
thrown by obstreperous, conflicting criticism. The most helpful, because
most appreciative reviews, she says, came to her from France."
"I suppose," said I, "that it is the dramatic element in the French
character that fits them to be good literary critics. They can enter
into another individuality. One would think it a matter of mere common
sense, that in order to criticise justly you must put yourself for the
time being as nearly as possible at the author's point of sight; form a
sympathetic estimate of what he is striving to do, and then you can tell
how nearly he attains his purpose. Of this delicate constructive
criticism, we have as yet, it seems to me, almost no specimens in the
English language. St. Beuve has left models in French, in this respect,
which we should do well to imitate. We Americans are a good-natured set,
and our criticism inclines to comity and good-fellowship far more than
to the rude bluntness of our English neighbors; and if we could make
this discriminating, as well as urbane, we should get about the right
thing."
Our conversation was interrupted here by Jim Fellows, who came
thundering up-stairs, singing at the top of his lungs--
"If an engine meet an engine
Coming round a curve,--
If it smash both train and tender,
What does It deserve?
Not a penny--paid to any,
So far as I observe--"
"Gracious, Jim! what a noise!" said I, as he entered the room with a
perfect war-whoop on the chorus.
"Bless my soul, man, why arn't you dressing? Arn't you going up to the
garden of Eden with me to night, to see the woman, and the serpent, and
all that?" he said, collaring me without ceremony. "Come away to your
bower, and curl your nut-brown hair; for
Time roils along,
Nor waits for mortal care or bliss,
We'll take our staff and travel on,
Till we arrive where the pretty gals is."
And thus singing, Jim whirled me down the stairs, and tumbled me into my
room, and went into his, where I heard him accompanying his toilet
operations with very loud selections from the last comic opera, beating
time with his hair-brush in a bewildering manner.
Jim was certainly a natural curiosity in respect to the eternal,
unceasing vivacity of his animal spirits, which were in a state of
effervesence from morning to night, frothing out in some odd freak of
drollery or buffoonery. There was not the smallest use in trying
remonstrance or putting on a sober face; his persistence, and the
endless variety of his queer conceits, would have overcome the gravity
of the saddest hermit that ever wore sackcloth and ashes.
Bolton had become accustomed to see him bursting into his room at all
hours, with a breeze which fluttered all his papers; and generally sat
back resignedly in his chair, and laughed in helpless good-nature, no
matter how untimely the interruption. "Oh, it's Jim!" he would say, in
tones of comic resignation. "It's no use; he must have his fling!"
"Time's up," said Jim, drumming on my door with his hair-brush when his
toilet was completed. "Come on, my boy, 'Let us haste to Kelvyn Grove.'"
I opened my door, and Jim took a paternal survey of me from neck-cloth
to boot-toe, turning me round and inspecting me on all sides, as if I
had been a Sunday-school boy, dressed for an exhibition.
"Those girls have such confounded sharp eyes," he remarked, "a fellow
needs to be well got up. Yes, you'll do; and you're not bad looking,
Hal, either, all things considered," he added, encouragingly. "Come
along. I've got lots of things to make a sensation with among the girls
to-night."
"What, for example?"
"Oh, I've been investigating round, and know sundry little interesting
particulars as to the new engagement just declared. I know when the
engagement ring was got, and what it cost, and where the bride's jewels
are making up, and what they are to be--all secrets, you understand, of
the very deadest door-nail kind. But Jim knows them! Oh, yes!--you'll
see the flutter I'll make in the roost to-night! I say, if you want to
cultivate your acquaintance with Miss Eva there, I'll draw all the rest
off, and keep 'em so wide awake round me that they'll never think what
becomes of you."
I must confess to feeling not a little nervous in the prospect of my
initiation into society, and regarding with a secret envy the dashing,
easy assurance of Jim. I called him in my heart something of a coxcomb,
but it was with a half-amused tolerance that I allowed him to patronize
me.
The experience of a young man who feels that he has his own way in life
to make, and all whose surroundings must necessarily be of the most
rigid economy, when he enters the modern sphere of young ladyhood, is
like a sudden change from Nova Zembla to the tropics. His is a world
of patient toil, of hard effort, of dry drudgery, of severe economies;
while our young American princesses, his social equals, whose society
fascinates him, to whose acquaintance he aspires, live like the fowls
of the air or the lilies of the field, without a thought of labor, or a
care, or serious responsibility of any kind. They are "gay creatures of
the element," living to enjoy and to amuse themselves, to be fostered,
sheltered, dressed, petted, and made to have "good times" generally. In
England, there are _men_ born to just this life and
position,--hereditary possessors of wealth, ease, and leisure, and
therefore able to be hereditary idlers and triflers--to live simply to
spend and to enjoy. But in America, where there are no laws to keep
fortunes in certain families, fortunes, as a general rule, must be
_made_ by their possessors, and young men must make them. The young,
unmarried women, therefore, remain the only aristocracy privileged to
live in idleness, and wait for their duties to come to them.
The house to which I was introduced that night was one of those New
York palaces that are furnished with eclectic taste, after a survey of
all that Europe has to give. The suites of rooms opened into each other
in charming vista, and the walls were hung with the choicest paintings.
It was evident that cultured skill and appreciation had presided over
the collection of the endless objects of artistic elegance and _vertu_
which adorned every apartment: it was no vulgar display of wealth, but a
selection which must have been the result of study and care.
Jim, acting the part of master of ceremonies, duly presented me to Mr.
and Mrs. Van Arsdel, and the bevy of young ladies, whose eyes twinkled
with dangerous merriment as I made my bow to them.
Mr. Van Arsdel was what one so often sees in these palaces, a simple,
quiet, silent man, not knowing or caring a bodle about any of the
wonders of art and luxury with which his womankind have surrounded him,
and not pretending in the least to comprehend them; but quietly
indulgent to the tastes and whims of wife and daughters, of whose
superior culture he is secretly not a little proud.
In Wall street Mr. Van Arsdel held up his head, and found much to say;
his air was Napoleonic; in short, _there_ his foot was on his native
heath. But in his own house, among Cuyps, and Frères, and Rembrandts,
and Fra Angelicos, with a set of polyglot daughters who spake with
tongues, he walked softly, and expressed himself with humility, like a
sensible man.
Mrs. Van Arsdel had been a beauty from her youth; had come of a family
renowned for belles, and was still a very handsome woman, and, of
course, versed in all those gentle diplomacies, and ineffable arts and
crafts, by which the sons of Adam are immediately swayed and governed.
Never was stately swan sailing at the head of a brood of fair young
cygnets more competent to leadership than she to marshal her troop of
bright, handsome daughters through the straits of girlhood to the high
places of matrimony. She read, and classified, and ticketed, at a
glance, every young man presented to her, yet there was not a shade of
the scrutiny dimming the bland cordiality of her reception. She was
winning, warming, and charming; fully alive to the éclat of a train of
admirers, and to the desirableness of keeping up a brilliant court.
"Mr. Henderson," she said, with a rich mellow laugh, "I tell Eva there
is some advantage, first or last, in almost everything. One of her
scatter-brained tricks has brought us the pleasure of your
acquaintance."
"Mamma has such a shocking way of generalizing about us girls," said
Eva; "If we once are caught doing a thing she talks as if we made a
regular habit of it. Now, I have come over from Brooklyn hundreds of
times, and never failed to have the proper change in my purse till this
once."
"I am to regard it, then, as a special piece of good fortune, sent to
_me_?" said I, drawing somewhat nearer, as Mrs. Van Arsdel turned to
receive some new arrivals.
I had occasion this evening to admire the facility with which Jim
fulfilled his promise of absorbing to himself the attention of the young
hostesses, and leaving me the advantage of a tête-à-tête with my new
acquaintance. I could see him at this moment, seated by Miss Alice, a
splendid, brilliant brunette, while the two pretty younger sisters, not
yet supposed to be out, were seated on ottomans, and all in various
stages of intense excitement. I could hear:
"Oh, Mr. Fellows, now, you _must_ tell us! indeed I am quite wild to
know! how _could_ you find it out?" in various, eager tones. Jim, of
course, was as fully aware of the importance of a dramatic mystery as a
modern novel-writer, and pursued a course of most obdurate provocation,
letting out only such glimpses and sparkles of the desired intelligence
as served to inflame curiosity, and hold the attention of the circle
concentrated upon himself.
"I think you are perfectly dreadful! Oh, Mr. Fellows, it really is a
shame that you don't tell us, really now I shall break friendship with
you,"--the tones here became threatening. Then Jim struck a tragic
attitude, and laid his hand on his heart, and declared that he was a
martyr, and there was more laughing and such a chatter, and confusion of
tongues, that nothing definite could be made out.
The length of time that young people, from eighteen to twenty, and even
upward, can keep themselves in ecstacies of excitement with such small
stock of real things of any sort to say, is something that invariably
astonishes old and sober people, who have forgotten that they once were
in this happy age, when everything made them laugh. There was soon noise
enough, and absorption enough, in the little circle,--widened by the
coming in of one or two other young men--to leave me quite unnoticed,
and in the background. This was not to be regretted, as Miss Eva assumed
with a charming ease and self-possession that rôle of hospitality and
entertainment, for which I fancy our young American princess has an
especial talent.
"Do you know, Mr. Henderson," she said, "we scarcely expected you, as we
hear you never go out."
"Indeed!" said I.
"Oh, yes! your friend, Mr. Fellows there, has presented you to us in
most formidable aspects--such a Diogenes! so devoted to your tub! no
getting you out on any terms!"
"I'm sure," I answered, laughing, "I wasn't aware that I had ever had
the honor of being discussed in your circle at all."
"Oh, indeed, Mr. Henderson, you gentlemen who make confidants of the
public are often known much better than you know. I have felt acquainted
with many of your thoughts for a long while."
What writer is insensible to such flattery as this? especially from the
prettiest of lips. I confess I took to this sort of thing kindly, and
was ready if possible for a little more of it. I began to say to myself
how charming it was to find beauty and fashion united with correct
literary taste.
"Now," she said, as the rooms were rapidly filling, "let me show you if
I have not been able to read aright some of your tastes. Come into what
I call my 'Italy.'" She lifted a _portiére_ and we stepped into a
charming little boudoir, furnished in blue satin, whose walls were
finished in compartments, in each of which hung a copy of one of Fra
Angelico's Angels. Over the white marble mantel was a superb copy of
"The Paradise." "There," she said, turning to me, with a frank smile,
"am I not right?"
"You are, indeed, Miss Van Arsdel. What beautiful copies! They take me
back to Florence."
"See here," she added, opening a velvet case, "here is something that I
know you noticed, for I read what you thought of it."
It was an exquisite copy of that rarest little gem of Fra Angelico's
painting, "The Death-Bed of the Virgin Mary,"--in time past the theme of
some of my verses, which Miss Van Arsdel thus graciously recalled.
"Do you know," she said, "the only drawback when one reads poems that
exactly express what one would like to say, is that it makes us envious;
one thinks, why couldn't _I_ have said it thus?"
"Miss Van Arsdel," said I, "do you remember the lines of Longfellow: 'I
shot an arrow through the air?'"
"What are they?" she said.
I repeated:
"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
"I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
"Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."
"Do you know," I said, "that this expresses exactly what a poet wants?
It is not admiration, it is sympathy. Poems are test papers, put in the
atmosphere of life to detect this property; we can find by them who
really _feel_ with us; and those who do, whether near or far, are
_friends_. The making of friends is the most precious gift for which
poetic utterance is given."
"I don't think," said she, "you should say '_make_ friends'--friends are
_discovered_, rather than made. There are people who are in their own
nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things like
poetry, music, and painting, are like the free-mason's signs--they
reveal the initiated to each other."
And so on we went, deliciously talking and ranging through portfolios of
engravings that took us through past days; rambling through all our
sunny Italian life, up the Campanile, through the old Duomo; sauntering
through the ilexes of the Boboli Garden; comparing notes on the pictures
in the Pitti and the Belle Arte--in short, we had one of that blessed
kind of times which come when two enthusiasts go back together over the
brightest and sunniest passages of their experience.
My head swam; a golden haze was around me, and I was not quite certain
whether I was in the body or not. It seemed to me that we two must
always have known each other, so very simple and natural did it seem for
us to talk together, and to understand one another. "But," she said,
suddenly checking herself, "if we get to going on all these things there
is no end to it, and I promised sister Ida that I would present you in
her study to-night."
"Seems to me it is so _very_ delightful here!" said I, deprecatingly,
not well pleased to come out of my dream.
"Ah, but you don't know, Mr. Henderson, this proposed presentation is a
special honor. I assure you that this is a distinction that is almost
never accorded to any of our callers; you must know sister Ida has
retired from the world, and given herself up to the pursuit of wisdom,
and it is the rarest thing on earth that she vouchsafes to care for
seeing any one."
"I should be only too much flattered," said I, as I followed my guide
across a hall, and into a little plainly furnished study, whose air of
rigid simplicity contrasted with the luxury of all the other parts of
the house.