who hold trumpet-blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim is
this--to make men think about unostentatious goodness; above all, to
make them love it and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction in
things which glitter and hold his eyes, is lost: first, because he will
thus see evil before all else; then, because he gets accustomed to the
sight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easily
succumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only
must one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wish
to slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their parts
only while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wings
the restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of one
of the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say is
true not only for those who are called humble and whose lot it is to
pass unremarked; it is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors.
If you would not be a brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace and
plumes, but empty inside, you must play the star rôle in the simple
spirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothing
worth except on hours of parade, is worth less than nothing. Have we the
perilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks?
Let us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent good
within us. Let us give to the structure whose façade is seen of our
fellow-men, a wide foundation of simplicity, of humble fidelity. And
then, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our brothers
who are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them--do we not? I call to
witness everyone who has found in life this encouraging experience, that
stones hidden in the soil hold up the whole edifice. All those who
arrive at having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humble
spiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the
good, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as
modest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living;
their example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them
is forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraign
ourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous and
serene, and our burdens lighten. In clouds they compass us about, these
witnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feet
from falling in the battle; and day by day do they prove to us that the
treasure of humanity is its hidden goodness.
X
THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME
In the time of the Second Empire, in one of our pleasantest
sub-prefectures of the provinces, a little way from some baths
frequented by the Emperor, there was a mayor, a very worthy man and
intelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that his
sovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he had
lived in the house of his fathers, a son respectful of the slightest
family traditions. But when once the all-absorbing idea of receiving the
Emperor had taken possession of his brain, he became another man. In
this new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, even
enjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appeared
poor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climb
this wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over such
superannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons;
pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room
was made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and
splendor. He and his family retired into close quarters, where people
and furniture incommoded each other generally. Then, having emptied his
purse and upset his household by this stroke of genius, he awaited the
royal guest. Alas, he soon saw the end of the Empire arrive, but the
Emperor never.
The folly of this poor man is not so rare. As mad as he are all those
who sacrifice their home life to the demands of the world. And the
danger in such a sacrifice is most menacing in times of unrest. Our
contemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing.
How many family treasures have they literally thrown away to satisfy
worldly ambitions and conventions; but the happiness upon which they
thought to come through these impious immolations always eludes them.
To give up the ancestral hearth, to let the family traditions fall into
desuetude, to abandon the simple domestic customs, for whatever return,
is to make a fool's bargain; and such is the place in society of family
life, that if this be impoverished, the trouble is felt throughout the
whole social organism. To enjoy a normal development, this organism has
need of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his own
hall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flock
without a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw his
originality--this unique something, which, joined to the distinctive
qualities of others, constitutes the wealth and strength of a community?
He can draw it only from his own family. Destroy the assemblage of
memories and practices whence emanates for each home an atmosphere in
miniature, and you dry up the sources of character, sap the strength of
public spirit.
It concerns the country that each home be a world, profound, respected,
communicating to its members an ineffaceable moral imprint. But before
pursuing the subject further, let us rid ourselves of a
misunderstanding. Family feeling, like all beautiful things, has its
caricature, which is family egoism. Some families are like barred and
bolted citadels, their members organized for the exploitation of the
whole world. Everything that does not directly concern them is
indifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost said
intruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed to
such an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In their
small way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time to
time through the ages, which possess themselves of universal rule, and
for which no one outside their own community counts. This is the spirit
that has sometimes made the family seem a retreat of egoism which it was
necessary to destroy for the public safety. But as patriotism and
jingoism are as far apart as the east from the west, so are family
feeling and clannishness.
* * * * *
Here we are talking of right family feeling, and nothing else in the
world can take its place; for in it lie in germ all those fine and
simple virtues which assure the strength and duration of social
institutions. And the very base of family feeling is respect for the
past; for the best possessions of a family are its common memories. An
intangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirs
constitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to consider
more precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dual
form: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in language, habits of
thought, sentiments, even instincts, and one sees them materialized in
portraits, furniture, buildings, dress, songs. To profane eyes, they are
nothing; to the eyes of those who know how to appreciate the things of
the family, they are relics with which one should not part at any price.
But what generally happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon the
sentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great
means and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and
pretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary.
What are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest its
peremptory claims? This is what people too often neglect to inquire.
They make a mistake. We treat the invader as very poor and simple people
do a pompous visitor. For this incommoding guest of a day, they pillage
their garden, bully their children and servants, and neglect their
work. Such conduct is not only wrong, it is impolitic. One should have
the courage to remain what he is, in the face of all comers.
The worldly spirit is full of impertinences. Here is a home which has
formed characters of mark, and is forming them yet. The people, the
furnishings, the customs are all in harmony. By marriage or through
relations of business or pleasure, the worldly spirit enters. It finds
everything out of date, awkward, too simple, lacking the modern touch.
At first it restricts itself to criticism and light raillery. But this
is the dangerous moment. Look out for yourself; here is the enemy! If
you so much as listen to his reasonings, to-morrow you will sacrifice a
piece of furniture, the next day a good old tradition, and so one by one
the family heirlooms dear to the heart will go to the bric-a-brac
dealer--and filial piety with them.
In the midst of your new habits and in the changed atmosphere, your
friends of other days, your old relatives, will be expatriated. Your
next step will be to lay them aside in their turn; the worldly spirit
leaves the old out of consideration. At last, established in an
absolutely transformed setting, even you will view yourself with
amazement. Nothing will be familiar, but surely it will be correct; at
least the world will be satisfied!--Ah! that is where you are mistaken!
After having made you cast out pure treasure as so much junk, it will
find that your borrowed livery fits you ill, and will hasten to make you
sensible of the ridiculousness of the situation. Much better have had
from the beginning the courage of your convictions, and have defended
your home.
Many young people when they marry, listen to this voice of the world.
Their parents have given them the example of a modest life; but the new
generation thinks it affirms its rights to existence and liberty, by
repudiating ways in its eyes too patriarchal. So these young folks make
efforts to set themselves up lavishly in the latest fashion, and rid
themselves of useless property at dirt-cheap prices. Instead of filling
their houses with objects which say: Remember! they garnish them with
quite new furnishings that as yet have no meaning. Wait, I am wrong;
these things are often symbols, as it were, of a facile and superficial
existence. In their midst one breathes a certain heady vapor of
mundanity. They recall the life outside, the turmoil, the rush. And were
one sometimes disposed to forget this life, they would call back his
wandering thought and say: Remember!--in another sense: Do not forget
your appointment at the club, the play, the races! The home, then,
becomes a sort of half-way house where one comes to rest a little
between two prolonged absences; it isn't a good place to stay. As it has
no soul, it does not speak to yours. Time to eat and sleep, and then off
again! Otherwise you become as dull as a hermit.
We are all acquainted with people who have a rage for being abroad, who
think the world would no longer go round if they didn't figure on all
sides of it. To stay at home is penal; there they cease to be in view. A
horror of home life possesses them to such a degree that they would
rather pay to be bored outside than be amused gratuitously within.
In this way society slowly gravitates toward life in herds, which must
not be confounded with public life. The life in herds is somewhat like
that of swarms of flies in the sun. Nothing so much resembles the
worldly life of a man as the worldly life of another man. And this
universal banality destroys the very essence of public spirit. One need
not journey far to discover the ravages made in modern society by the
spirit of worldliness; and if we have so little foundation, so little
equilibrium, calm good sense and initiative, one of the chief reasons
lies in the undermining of the home life. The masses have timed their
pace by that of people of fashion. They too have become worldly. Nothing
can be more so than to quit one's own hearth for the life of saloons.
The squalor and misery of the homes is not enough to explain the current
which carries each man away from his own. Why does the peasant desert
for the inn the house that his father and grandfather found so
comfortable? It has remained the same. There is the same fire in the
same chimney. Whence comes it that it lights only an incomplete circle,
when in olden times young and old sat shoulder to shoulder? Something
has changed in the minds of men. Yielding to dangerous impulses, they
have broken with simplicity. The fathers have quitted their post of
honor, the wives grow dull beside the solitary hearth, and the children
quarrel while waiting their turn to go abroad, each after his own fancy.
We must learn again to live the home life, to value our domestic
traditions. A pious care has preserved certain monuments of the past. So
antique dress, provincial dialects, old folk songs have found
appreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear from
the earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great past,
these vestiges of the souls of our ancestors! Let us do the same for our
family traditions, save and guard as much as possible of the
patriarchal, whatever its form.
* * * * *
But not everyone has traditions to keep. All the more reason for
redoubling the effort to constitute and foster a family life. And to do
this there is need neither of numbers nor a rich establishment. To
create a home you must have the spirit of home. Just as the smallest
village may have its history, its moral stamp, so the smallest home may
have its soul. Oh! the spirit of places, the atmosphere which surrounds
us in human dwellings! What a world of mystery! Here, even on the
threshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, something
intangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in than
friendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls have
ears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that a
dwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proof
of its quality even in the apartments of bachelors and solitary women.
What an abyss between one room and another room! Here, all is dead,
indifferent, commonplace: the device of the owner is written all over
it, even in his fashion of arranging his photographs and books: All is
the same to me! There, one breathes in animation, a contagious joy in
life. The visitor hears repeated in countless fashions: "Whoever you
are, guest of an hour, I wish you well, peace be with you!"
Words can do little justice to the subject of home, tell little about
the effect of a favorite flower in the window, or the charm of an old
arm-chair where the grandfather used to sit, offering his wrinkled hands
to the kisses of chubby children. Poor moderns, always moving or
remodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customs
and creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to the
pathos and emptiness of our changeful existence by abandoning the life
of the home. Let us light again the flame put out on our hearths, make
sanctuaries for ourselves, warm nests where the children may grow into
men, where love may find privacy, old age repose, prayer an altar, and
the fatherland a cult!
XI
SIMPLE BEAUTY
Someone may protest against the nature of the simple life in the name of
esthetics, or oppose to ours the theory of the service of luxury--that
providence of business, fostering mother of arts, and grace of civilized
society. We shall try, briefly, to anticipate these objections.
It will no doubt have been evident that the spirit which animates these
pages is not utilitarian. It would be an error to suppose that the
simplicity we seek has anything in common with that which misers impose
upon themselves through cupidity, or narrow-minded people through false
austerity. To the former the simple life is the one that costs least; to
the latter it is a flat and colorless existence, whose merit lies in
depriving one's self of everything bright, smiling, seductive.
It displeases us not a whit that people of large means should put their
fortune into circulation instead of hoarding it, so giving life to
commerce and the fine arts. That is using one's privileges to good
advantage. What we would combat is foolish prodigality, the selfish use
of wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part of
those who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary.
The lavishness of a Mæcenas could not have the same effect in a society
as that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by the
magnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. In these two cases
the same term means very different things--to scatter money broadcast
does not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, and
others which degrade them. Besides, to scatter money supposes that one
is well provided with it. When the love of sumptuous living takes
possession of those whose means are limited, the matter becomes
strangely altered. And a very striking characteristic of our time is
the rage for scattering broadcast which the very people have who ought
to husband their resources. Munificence is a benefit to society, that we
grant willingly. Let us even allow that the prodigality of certain rich
men is a safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall not
attempt to gainsay it. Our contention is that too many people meddle
with the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their
interest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune and
a public danger.
* * * * *
So much for the utility of luxury.
We now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics--oh!
very modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists.
Through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as
rivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous,
stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded
by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and
graceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us
regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of
such a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from
the want of simplicity as does our literature--too much in it that is
irrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. Rarely is it given us to
contemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied to
perfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. We need to
be rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its seal
on the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than all
our pompous exhibitions.
* * * * *
Yet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary esthetics
of life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of his
dwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without which
it lacks charm. For it is not a matter of indifference whether man pays
attention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it is
by them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. Far from
considering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting,
beautifying and poetizing of forms, I think we should spend as much as
we can upon it. Nature gives us her example, and the man who should
affect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which we
garnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of Him who
has put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hour
and the eternal hills.
But we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beauty
with that which has only the name. The beauty and poetry of existence
lie in the understanding we have of it. Our home, our table, our dress
should be the interpreters of intentions. That these intentions be so
expressed, it is first necessary to have them, and he who possesses them
makes them evident through the simplest means. One need not be rich to
give grace and charm to his habit and his habitation: it suffices to
have good taste and good-will. We come here to a point very important to
everybody, but perhaps of more interest to women than to men.
Those who would have women conceal themselves in coarse garments of the
shapeless uniformity of bags, violate nature in her very heart, and
misunderstand completely the spirit of things. If dress were only a
precaution to shelter us from cold or rain, a piece of sacking or the
skin of a beast would answer. But it is vastly more than this. Man puts
himself entire into all that he does; he transforms into types the
things that serve him. The dress is not simply a covering, it is a
symbol. I call to witness the rich flowering of national and provincial
costumes, and those worn by our early corporations. A woman's toilette,
too, has something to say to us. The more meaning there is in it, the
greater its worth. To be truly beautiful, it must tell us of beautiful
things, things personal and veritable. Spend all the money you possess
upon it, if its form is determined by chance or custom, if it has no
relation to her who wears it, it is only toggery, a domino.
Ultra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personality
under designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principal
attraction. From this abuse it comes about that many things which women
admire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of their
husbands and fathers. What would you say of a young girl who expressed
her thoughts in terms very choice, indeed, but taken word for word from
a phrase-book? What charm could you find in this borrowed language? The
effect of toilettes well-designed in themselves but seen again and
again on all women indiscriminately, is precisely the same.
I can not resist citing here a passage from Camille Lemonnier, that
harmonizes with my idea.
"Nature has given to the fingers of woman a charming art, which she
knows by instinct, and which is peculiarly her own--as silk to the worm,
and lace-work to the swift and subtle spider. She is the poet, the
interpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of the
mystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. All the talent she
expends in her effort to equal man in the other arts, is never worth the
spirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her skillful
hands.
"Well, I wish that this art were more honored than it is. As education
should consist in thinking with one's mind, feeling with one's heart,
expressing the little personalities of the inmost, invisible _I_,--which
on the contrary are repressed, leveled down by conformity,--I would that
the young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, might
early become the little exponent of this art of the toilet, her own
dressmaker in short--she who one day shall make the dresses of her
children. But with the taste and the gift to improvise, to express
herself in that masterpiece of feminine personality and skill--_a gown_,
without which a woman is no more than a bundle of rags."
The dress you have made for yourself is almost always the most becoming,
and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. Women of
leisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and country
alike. Since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, in
very doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almost
disappeared from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift to
please than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughter
of the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and beautiful from
her simplicity alone?
These same reflections might be applied to the fashion of decorating and
arranging our houses. If there are toilettes which reveal an entire
conception of life, hats that are poems, knots of ribbon that are
veritable works of art, so there are interiors which after their manner
speak to the mind. Why, under pretext of decorating our homes, do we
destroy that personal character which always has such value? Why have
our sleeping-rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception-rooms to
waiting-rooms, by making predominant a uniform type of official beauty?