THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND
There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal
aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from
which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions,
or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a
sharp line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and
the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives
for an abstraction,--whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy
here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle
Ages.
What our people mean by "aristocracy" is merely the richer part of the
community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not
"kerridges,") kid-glove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies'
heads, give parties where the persons who call them by the above title
are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking,
talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and
would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even
the President of the United States, face to face. Some of these great
folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and
assuming,--but they form a class, and are named as above in the common
speech.
It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when
subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and
here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these
into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for
four ancient maidens,--with whom it is best the family should die out,
unless it can begin again as its grandfather did. Now a million is
a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the
summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind
of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that
sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether
they milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the
millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of
persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable
human element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration
without falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and fugitive
fact of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some
special means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the
third generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that
one need not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he
knew in childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into
the hands of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying
parcels when the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating
their venison over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in
embossed coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in
white-topped boots with silken tassels.
There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call
it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to
be a _caste_,--not in any odious sense,--but, by the repetition of the
same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct
organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity,
and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the
good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all
we can and tell all we see.
If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our
colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two
different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme
cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure
is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless
attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or
at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic,
even if bright,--the movements of the face clumsy, like those of the
limbs,--the voice unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words were
coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect
is commonly slender,--his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,--his
features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye is bright and
quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers
dance over their music,--and his whole air, though it may be timid, and
even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what
to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the
first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a
pointer or a setter to his field-work.
The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to
bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of
life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than
their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less
than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed.
A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of
will and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very
few of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is almost always the
son of scholars or scholarly persons.
That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the _Brahmin
caste of New England_. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled
aristocracy to which I have referred, and which I am sure you will
at once acknowledge. There are races of scholars among us, in which
aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of,
are congenital and hereditary. Their names are always on some college
catalogue or other. They break out every generation or two in some
learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out. At
last some newer name takes their place, it may be,--but you inquire a
little and you find it is the blood of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or
the Ellerys or some of the old historic scholars, disguised under the
altered name of a female descendant.
I suppose there is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our
Northern States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general
distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very
probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come
direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps,
even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the
English alphabet, but of no other.
It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude
of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual
classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training
are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as
well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more
or less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that
sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands
and sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into
intellectual aptitude without having had much opportunity for
intellectual acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an
improved strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in
the large uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary
class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism;
thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the
hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor
for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of
animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an
unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always
overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality.
A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add
_muscular_) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as
his thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes,
your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia in '82, after working too
hard on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch the main
fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged order, just as our
best fruits come from well-known grafts,--though now and then a seedling
apple, like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel,
springs from a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the
gardens in the land.
Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of
New England.