_February 25, 1867._
18. There is this great advantage in the writing real letters, that
the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for saying, in or out
of order, everything that the chances of the day bring into one's
head, in connection with the matter in hand; and as such things very
usually go out of one's head again, after they get tired of their
lodging, they would otherwise never get said at all. And thus to-day,
quite out of order, but in very close connection with another part of
our subject, I am going to tell you what I was thinking on Friday
evening last, in Covent Garden Theater, as I was looking, and not
laughing, at the pantomime of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.'
When you begin seriously to consider the question referred to in my
second letter, of the essential, and in the outcome inviolable,
connection between quantity of wages, and quantity of work, you will
see that "wages" in the full sense don't mean "pay" merely, but the
reward, whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of
various other advantages, which a man is meant by Providence to get
during life, for work well done. Even limiting the idea to "pay," the
question is not so much what quantity of coin you get, as--what you
can get for it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good pay
or not, depends wholly on what a "shilling's worth" is; that is to
say, what quantity of the things you want may be had for a shilling.
And that again depends, and a great deal more than that depends, on
what you _do_ want. If only drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay
may be enough for you; if you want good meat and good clothes, you
must have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, larger still, and
so on. You say, perhaps, "every one wants these better things." So far
from that, a wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of
the final attainments of humanity. There are now not many European
gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love
of fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first
breeze of a May morning.
19. But there are better things even than these, which one may want.
Grant that one has good food, clothes, lodging, and breathing, is that
all the pay one ought to have for one's work? Wholesome means of
existence and nothing more? Enough, perhaps, you think, if everybody
could get these. It may be so; I will not, at this moment, dispute it;
nevertheless, I will boldly say that you should sometimes want more
than these; and for one of many things more, you should want
occasionally to be amused!
You know, the upper classes, most of them, want to be amused all day
long. They think
"One moment _un_amused a misery
Not made for feeble men."
Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them for this; and
thinking how much worthier and nobler it was to work all day, and care
at night only for food and rest, than to do no useful thing all day,
eat unearned food, and spend the evening, as the morning, in "change
of follies and relays of joy." No, my good friend, that is one of the
fatalest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, in sum and issue of it,
not to care to be amused. It is indeed a far higher _moral_ state, but
is a much lower _creature_ state, than that of the upper classes.
20. Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad
siding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again,
and slips aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen
inches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his changeless duty all day
long, content, for eternal reward, with his night's rest, and his
champed mouthful of hay;--anything more earnestly moral and beautiful
one cannot image--I never see the creature without a kind of worship.
And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he
knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this
world;--who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the
words of the 'Zauberfloete' and of 'Don Giovanni'--foolishest and most
monstrous of conceivable human words and subjects of thought--for the
future "amusement" of his race!--No such spectacle of unconscious (and
in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the
highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history. But
Mozart is nevertheless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding;
nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker that he, and
all his frivolous audiences, should evade the degradation of the
profitless piping, only by living, like horses, in daily physical
labor for daily bread.
21. There are three things to which man is born[A]--labor, and sorrow,
and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its
nobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There is base sorrow,
and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the
things themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three.
Labor without joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow
without labor is base. Joy without labor is base.
[A] I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this
paragraph, on which much of what else I have to say depends.
22. I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to the pantomime;
I am not ready to come to it yet in due course, for we ought to go and
see the Japanese jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to
you what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day; so I shall merely
tell you what part of the play set me thinking of all this, and leave
you to consider of it yourself, till I can send you another letter.
The pantomime was, as I said, 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' The
forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions, who
were girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some
way mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were
girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the
Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene,
with a forest, in which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in
which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow which was all of
girls.
23. Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as far as my
boyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were
yet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in
speciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors--Mr. W. H. Payne and
Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was done admirably. There
were two subordinate actors, who played, subordinately well, the fore
and hind legs of a donkey. And there was a little actress of whom I
have chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the little part she had
to play. The scene in which she appeared was the only one in the whole
pantomime in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few rare
exceptions, any dramatic possibility. It was the home scene, in which
Ali Baba's wife, on washing day, is called upon by butcher, baker,
and milkman, with unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her distress
hears her husband's knock at the door, and opens it for him to drive
in his donkey, laden with gold. The children who have been beaten
instead of getting breakfast, presently share in the raptures of their
father and mother; and the little lady I spoke of, eight or nine years
old,--dances a _pas-de-deux_ with the donkey.
24. She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She
was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish or
strength of her motion, that she had been put to continual torture
through half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any
child well taught, but painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no
older person,--attempted no curious or fantastic skill. She was
dressed decently,--she moved decently,--she looked and behaved
innocently,--and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace,
spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast
theater, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was
not one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine.
Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you,
were girls; and, there being no thieving to be presently done, and
time hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty
thief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British
public gave them a round of applause. Whereupon I fell a thinking; and
saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream.