_Past, Present and Future_
Welcome to them each and all! They do good--the deepest, widest, most
needed good--though quite certainly not in the ways attempted--which
have, at times, something irresistibly comic. What can be more farcical,
for instance, than the sight of a worthy gentleman coming three or four
thousand miles through wet and wind to speak complacently and at
great length on matters of which he both entirely mistakes or knows
nothing--before crowds of auditors equally complacent, and equally at
fault?
Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those visitors we have, and have
had, from abroad among us--and may the procession continue! We have
had Dickens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert Spencer, Oscar Wilde, Lord
Coleridge--soldiers, savants, poets--and now Matthew Arnold and Irving
the actor. Some have come to make money--some for a "good time"--some to
help us along and give us advice--and some undoubtedly to investigate,
_bona fide_, this great problem, democratic America, looming upon the
world with such cumulative power through a hundred years, now with the
evident intention (since the secession war) to stay, and take a leading
hand, for many a century to come, in civilization's and humanity's
eternal game. But alas! that very investigation--the method of that
investigation--is where the deficit most surely and helplessly comes in.
Let not Lord Coleridge and Mr. Arnold (to say nothing of the illustrious
actor) imagine that when they have met and survey'd the
etiquettical gatherings of our wealthy, distinguish'd and
sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens (New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, &c., have certain stereotyped strings of them, continually
lined and paraded like the lists of dishes at hotel tables--you are sure
to get the same over and over again--it is very amusing)--and the bowing
and introducing, the receptions at the swell clubs, the eating and
drinking and praising and praising back--and the next "day riding
about Central Park, or doing the" Public Institutions "--and so passing
through, one after another, the full-dress coteries of the Atlantic
cities, all grammatical and cultured and correct, with the toned-down
manners of the gentlemen, and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and
finger-glasses--Let not our eminent visitors, we say, suppose that, by
means of these experiences, they have "seen America," or captur'd any
distinctive clew or purport thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats
that lie within and vitalize this Commonweal to-day--of the hard-pan
purports and idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and triumphantly by its
bulk of men North and South, generation after generation, superficially
unconscious of their own aims, yet none the less pressing onward
with deathless intuition--those coteries do not furnish the faintest
scintilla. In the Old World the best flavor and significance of a race
may possibly need to be look'd for in its "upper classes," its gentries,
its court, its _état major_. In the United States the rule is revers'd.
Besides (and a point, this, perhaps deepest of all,) the special marks
of our grouping and design are not going to be understood in a hurry.
The lesson and scanning right on the ground are difficult; I was going
to say they are impossible to foreigners--but I have occasionally found
the clearest appreciation of all, coming from far-off quarters. Surely
nothing could be more apt, not only for our eminent visitors present and
to come, but for home study, than the following editorial criticism of
the London _Times_ on Mr. Froude's visits and lectures here a few years
ago, and the culminating dinner given at Delmonico's, with its brilliant
array of guests:
"We read the list," says the _Times_, "of those who assembled to do
honor to Mr. Froude: there were Mr. Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis,
Mr. Bryant; we add the names of those who sent letters of regret that
they could not attend in person--Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier. They are
names which are well known--almost as well known and as much honor'd in
England as in America; and yet what must we say in the end? The American
people outside this assemblage of writers is something vaster and
greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend. It cannot be said
of any or all of them that they can speak for their nation. We who look
on at this distance are able perhaps on that account to see the more
clearly that there are qualities of the American people which find no
representation, no voice, among these their spokesmen. And what is true
of them is true of the English class of whom Mr. Froude may be said to
be the ambassador. Mr. Froude is master of a charming style. He has the
gift of grace and the gift of sympathy. Taking any single character as
the subject of his study, he may succeed after a very short time in so
comprehending its workings as to be able to present a living figure
to the intelligence and memory of his readers. But the movements of a
nation, the, _voiceless purpose of a people which cannot put its
own thoughts into words, yet acts upon them in each successive
generation_--these things do not lie within his grasp.... The functions
of literature such as he represents are limited in their action; the
influence he can wield is artificial and restricted, and, while he and
his hearers please and are pleas'd with pleasant periods, his great mass
of national life will flow around them unmov'd in its tides by action as
powerless as that of the dwellers by the shore to direct the currents of
the ocean."
A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded, permanently
treasur'd by our literary classes and educators. (The gestation, the
youth, the knitting preparations, are now over, and it is full time for
definite purpose, result.) How few think of it, though it is the impetus
and background of our whole Nationality and popular life. In the present
brief memorandum I very likely for the first time awake "the intelligent
reader" to the idea and inquiry whether there isn't such a thing as the
distinctive genius of our democratic New World, universal, immanent,
bringing to a head the best experience of the past--not specially
literary or intellectual--not merely "good," (in the Sunday School and
Temperance Society sense,)-some invisible spine and great sympathetic
to these States, resident only in the average people, in their practical
life, in their physiology, in their emotions, in their nebulous yet
fiery patriotism, in the armies (both sides) through the whole secession
war--an identity and character which indeed so far "finds no voice among
their spokesmen."
To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears to-day, is even yet,
for its most important results, entirely in the tentative state; its
very formation-stir and whirling trials and essays more splendid and
picturesque, to my thinking, than the accomplish'd growths and shows
of other lands, through European history, or Greece, or all the past.
Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is not to be, if it ever
comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of sentimentalism or polish'd work
merely by itself, or in abstraction. So long as such literature is no
born branch and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted and grown from its
roots, and fibred with its fibre, it can never answer any deep call
or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught Republic is wiser than its
teachers. The best literature is always a result of something far
greater than itself--not the hero, but the portrait of the hero. Before
there can be recorded history or poem there must be the transaction.
Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad, the interminable Hindu epics,
the Greek tragedies, even the Bible itself, range the immense facts of
what must have preceded them, their _sine qua non_--the veritable poems
and masterpieces, of which, grand as they are, the word-statements are
but shreds and cartoons.
For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest, most
stupendous processes ever known, ever perform'd by man or nation, on the
largest scales and in countless varieties, are now and here presented.
Not as our poets and preachers are always conventionally putting it--but
quite different. Some colossal foundry, the flaming of the fire, the
melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging crowds of workmen
shifting from point to point, the murky shadows, the rolling haze, the
discord, the crudeness, the deafening din, the disorder, the dross and
clouds of dust, the waste and extravagance of material, the shafts of
darted sunshine through the vast open roof-scuttles aloft-the mighty
castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps delay'd long, yet each in
its due time, with definite place and use and meaning--Such, more like,
is a symbol of America.
After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we reiterate, and
in the whole Land's name, a welcome to our eminent guests. Visits like
theirs, and hospitalities, and hand-shaking, and face meeting face,
and the distant brought near--what divine solvents they are! Travel,
reciprocity, "interviewing," intercommunion of lands--what are they
but Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids? O that our own
country--that every land in the world--could annually, continually,
receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the official magnates, of
other lands, as honor'd guests. O that the United States, especially the
West, could have had a good long visit and explorative jaunt, from
the noble and melancholy Tourguéneff, before he died--or from Victor
Hugo--or Thomas Carlyle. Castelar, Tennyson, any of the two or three
great Parisian essayists--were they and we to come face to face, how is
it possible but that the right understanding would ensue?