literary horse-laughter was levelled at the dandy does not always
confine himself to indirect scoffing; here is a plain statement--"First,
touching dandies, let us consider with some scientific strictness what a
dandy specially is. A dandy is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade
office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty
of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this
one object--the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that, as others
dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of clothes has
sprung upon the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct
of genius; he is inspired with cloth--a poet of cloth. Like a generous
creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his idea an action--shows
himself in peculiar guise to mankind, walks forth a witness and living
martyr to the eternal worth of clothes. We called him a poet; is not his
body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning
Huddersfield dyes, a sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow?"
This is very witty and very trenchant in allusion, but I am obliged to
say seriously that Carlyle by no means reached the root of the matter.
The mere tailor's dummy is deplorable, despicable, detestable, but a
real man is none the worse if he gives way to the imperious human desire
for adornment, and some of the men who have made permanent marks on the
world's face have been of the tribe whom our Scotchman satirised. I have
known sensible young men turned into perfectly objectionable slovens by
reading Carlyle; they thought they rendered a tribute to their master's
genius by making themselves look disreputable, and they found allies to
applaud them. One youth of a poetic turn saw that the sage let his hair
fall over his forehead in a tangled mass. Now this young man had very
nice wavy hair, which naturally fell back in a sweep, but he devoted
himself with an industry worthy of a much better cause to the task of
making his hair fall in unkempt style over his brow. When he succeeded,
he looked partly like a Shetland pony, partly like a street-arab; but
his own impression was that his wild and ferocious appearance acted as a
living rebuke to young men of weaker natures. If I had to express a
blunt opinion, I should say he was a dreadful simpleton. Every man likes
to be attractive in some way in the springtime and hey-day of life; when
the blood flushes the veins gaily and the brain is sensitive to joy,
then a man glories in looking well. Why blame him? The young officer
likes to show himself with his troop in gay trappings; the athlete likes
to wear garments that set off his frame to advantage; and it is good
that this desire for distinction exists, else we should have but a grey
and sorry world to live in. When the pulses beat quietly and life moves
on the downward slope, a man relies on more sober attractions, and he
ceases to care for that physical adornment which every young and healthy
living creature on earth appreciates. So long as our young men are
genuinely manly, good, strong, and courageous, I am not inclined to find
fault with them, even if they happen to trip and fall into slight
extravagances in the matter of costume. The creature who lives to dress
I abhor, the sane and sound man who fulfils his life-duties gallantly
and who is not above pleasing himself and others by means of reasonable
adornments I like and even respect warmly. The philosophers may growl as
they chose, but I contend that the sight of a superb young Englishman
with his clean clear face, his springy limbs, his faultless habiliments
is about as pleasant as anything can be to a discerning man. Moreover,
it is by no means true that the dandy is necessarily incompetent when he
comes to engage in the severe work of life. Our hero, our Nelson, kept
his nautical dandyism until he was middle-aged. Who ever accused him of
incompetence? Think of his going at Trafalgar into that pouring Inferno
of lead and iron with all his decorations blazing on him! "In honour I
won them and in honour I will wear them," said this unconscionable
dandy; and he did wear them until he had broken our terrible enemy's
power, saved London from sack, and worse, and yielded up his gallant
soul to his Maker. Rather an impressive kind of dandy was that wizened
little animal. "There'll be wigs on the green, boys--the dandies are
coming!" So Marlborough's soldiers used to cry when the regiment of
exquisites charged. At home the fierce Englishmen strutted around in
their merry haunts and showed off their brave finery as though their one
task in life were to wear gaudy garments gracefully; but, when the
trumpet rang for the charge, the silken dandies showed that they had the
stuff of men in them. The philosopher is a trifle too apt to say,
"Anybody who does not choose to do as I like is, on the face of it, an
inferior member of the human race." I utterly refuse to have any such
doctrine thrust down my throat. No sage would venture to declare that
the handsome, gorgeous John Churchill was a fool or a failure. He beat
England's enemies, he made no blunder in his life, and he survived the
most vile calumnies that ever assailed a struggling man; yet, if he was
not a dandy, then I never saw or heard of one. All our fine fellows who
stray with the British flag over the whole earth belong more or less
distinctly to the dandy division. The velvet glove conceals the iron
hand; the pleasing modulated voice can rise at short notice to tones of
command; the apparent languor will on occasion start with electric
suddenness into martial vigour. The lounging dandies who were in India
when the red storm of the Mutiny burst from a clear sky suddenly became
heroes who toiled, fought, lavished their strength and their blood,
performed glorious prodigies of unselfish action, and snatched an empire
from the fires of ruin.
Even if a young fellow cannot afford fine clothes, he can be neat, and I
always welcome the slightest sign of fastidiousness, because it
indicates self-respect. The awful beings who wear felt hats swung on one
side, glaring ties, obtrusive checks, and carry vulgar little sticks,
are so abhorrent that I should journey a dozen miles to escape meeting
one of them. The cheap, nasty, gaudy garments are an index to a vast
vulgarity of mind and soul; the cheap "swell" is a sham, and, as a sham,
he is immoral and repulsive. But the modest youth need not copy the wild
unrestraint of the gentleman known as "'Arry"; he can contrive to make
himself attractive without sullying his appearance by a trace of cheap
and nasty adornment, and every attempt which he makes to look seemly and
pleasing tends subtly to raise his own character. Once or twice I have
said that you cannot really love any one wholly unless you can sometimes
laugh at him. Now I cannot laugh at the invertebrate haunter of flashy
bars and theatre-stalls, because he has not the lovable element in him
which invites kindly laughter; but I do smile--not unadmiringly--at our
dandy, and forgive him his little eccentricities because I know that
what the Americans term the "hard pan" of his nature is sound. It is all
very well for unhandsome philosophers in duffel to snarl at our
butterfly youth. The dry dull person who devours blue-books and figures
may mock at their fribbles; but persons who are tolerant take large and
gentle views, and they indulge the dandy, and let him strut for his day
unmolested, until the pressing hints given by the years cause him to
modify his splendours and sink into unassuming sobriety of demeanour and
raiment.
_June, 1888._
_GENIUS AND RESPECTABILITY_.
A very lengthy biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley appeared recently, and
the biographer thought it his duty to give the most minute and peculiar
details concerning the poet's private life. In consequence, the book is
a deplorable one in many respects, and no plain-minded person can read
it without feeling sorry that our sweet singer should be presented to us
in the guise of a weak-minded hypocrite. One critic wrote a great many
pages in which he bemoans the dreary and sordid family-life of the man
who wrote the "Ode to the West Wind." I can hardly help sympathizing
with the critic, for indeed Shelley's proceedings rather test the
patience of ordinary mortals, who do not think that poetic--or rather
artistic--ability licenses its possessor to behave like a scoundrel.
Shelley wrote the most lovely verse in praise of purity; but he tempted
a poor child to marry him, deserted her, insulted her, and finally left
her to drown herself when brutal neglect and injury had driven her
crazy. Poor Harriet Westbrook! She did not behave very discreetly after
her precious husband left her; but she was young, and thrown on a hard
world without any strength but her own to protect her. While she was
drifting into misery the airy poet was talking sentiment and ventilating
his theories of the universe to Mary Godwin. Harriet was too "shallow"
for the rhymester, and the penalty she paid for her shallowness was to
be deceived, enticed into a rash marriage, brutally insulted, and left
to fare as well as she might in a world that is bitterly cruel to
helpless girls. The maker of rhymes goes off gaily to the Continent to
enjoy himself heartily and write bewitching poems; Harriet stays at home
and lives as best she can on her pittance until the time comes for her
despairing plunge into the Serpentine. It is true that the poet invited
the poor creature to come and stay with him; but what a piece of
unparalleled insolence toward a wronged lady! The admirers of the rhymer
say, "Ah, but Harriet's society was not congenial to the poet."
Congenial! How many brave men make their bargain in youth and stand to
it gallantly unto the end? A simple soul of this sort thinks to himself,
"Well, I find that my wife and I are not in sympathy; but perhaps I may
be in fault. At any rate, she has trusted her life to me, and I must try
to make her days as happy as possible." It seems that supreme poets are
to be exempt from all laws of manliness and honour, and a simple woman
who cannot babble to them about their ideals and so forth is to be
pitched aside like a soiled glove! Honest men who cannot jingle words
are content with faith and honour and rectitude, but the poet is to be
applauded if he behaves like a base fellow on finding that some unhappy
loving creature cannot talk in his particular fashion. We may all be
very low Philistines if we are not prepared to accept rhymers for
chartered villains; but some of us still have a glimmering of belief in
the old standards of nobility and constancy. Can any one fancy Walter
Scott cheating a miserable little girl of sixteen into marriage, and
then leaving her, only to many a female philosopher? How that noble soul
would have spurned the maundering sentimentalist who talked of truth and
beauty, and music and moonlight and feeling, and behaved as a mean and
bad man! Scott is more to my fancy than is Shelley.
Again, this poet, this exquisite weaver of verbal harmonies, is
represented to us by his worshippers as having a passion for truth;
whereas it happens that he was one of the most remarkable fibbers that
ever lived. He would come home with amazing tales about assassins who
had waylaid him, and try to give himself importance by such blustering
inventions. "Imagination!" says the enthusiast; but among commonplace
persons another word is used. "Your lordship knows what kleptomania is?"
said a counsel who was defending a thief. Justice Byles replied, "Oh,
yes! I come here to cure it." Some critical justice might say the same
of Shelley's imagination. We are also told that Shelley's excessive
nobility of nature prevented him from agreeing with his commonplace
father; and truly the poet was a bad and an ungrateful son. But, if a
pretty verse-maker is privileged to be an undutiful son, what becomes of
all our old notions? I think once more of the great Sir Walter, and I
remember his unquestioning obedience to his parents. Then we may also
remember Gibbon, who was quite as able and useful a man as Shelley. The
historian loved a young French lady, but his father refused consent to
their marriage, and Gibbon quietly obeyed and accepted his hard fate.
The passion sanctified his whole life, and, as he says, made him more
dear to himself; he settled his colossal work, and remained unmarried
for life. He may have been foolish: but I prefer his behaviour to that
of a man who treats his father with contumely and ingratitude even while
he is living upon him. We hear much of Shelley's unselfishness, but it
does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim.
The "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode Written in Dejection near Naples,"
and "The Skylark" are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly
pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces a few
masterpieces of art.
A confident and serene critic attacks Mr. Arnold very severely because
the latter writer thinks that poets should be amenable to fair and
honest social laws. If I understand the critic aright, we must all be so
thankful for beautiful literary works that we must be ready to let the
producers of such works play any pranks they please under high heaven.
They are the children of genius, and we are to spoil them; "Childe
Harold" and "Manfred" are such wondrous productions that we need never
think of the author's orgies at Venice and the Abbey; "Epipsychidion" is
lovely, so we should not think of poor Harriet Westbrook casting herself
into the Serpentine. This is marvellous doctrine, and one hardly knows
whither it might lead us if we carried it into thorough practice.
Suppose that, in addition to indulging the spoiled children of genius,
we were to approve all the proceedings of the clever children in any
household. I fancy that the dwellers therein would have an unpleasant
time. Noble charity towards human weakness is one thing; but blind
adulation of clever and immoral men is another. We have great need to
pity the poor souls who are the prey of their passions, but we need not
worship them. A large and lofty charity will forgive the shortcomings of
Robert Burns; we may even love that wild and misguided but essentially
noble man. That is well; yet we must not put Burns forward and offer our
adulation in such a way as to set him up for a model to young men. A man
may read--
The pale moon is setting beyont the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, oh!
The pathos will wring his heart; but he should not ask any youth to
imitate the conduct of the great poet. Carlyle said very profoundly that
new morality must be made before we can judge Mirabeau; but Carlyle
never put his hero's excesses in the foreground of his history, nor did
he try to apologize for them; he only said, "Here is a man whose stormy
passions overcame him and drove him down the steep to ruin! Think of him
at his best, pardon him, and imitate, in your weak human fashion, the
infinite Divine Mercy." That is good; and it is certainly very different
from the behaviour of writers who ask us to regard their heroes'
evil-doing as not only pardonable, but as being almost admirable.
This Shelley controversy raises several weighty issues. We forgive Burns
because he again and again offers us examples of splendid self-sacrifice
in the course of his broken life, and we are able to do so because the
balance is greatly on the good side; but we do not refrain from saying,
"In some respects Burns was a scamp." The fact is that the claims of
weak-headed adorers who worship men of genius would lead to endless
mischief if they were allowed. Men who were skilled in poetry and music
and art have often behaved like scoundrels; but their scoundrelism
should be reprobated, and not excused. And my reason for this contention
is very simple--once allow that a man of genius may override all
salutary conventions, and the same conventions will be overridden by
vain and foolish mediocrities. Take, for example, the conventions which
guide us in the matter of dress. Most people grant that in many respects
our modern dress is ugly in shape, ugly in material, and calculated to
promote ill-health. The hard hat which makes the brow ache must affect
the wearer's health, and therefore, when we see the greatest living poet
going about in a comfortable soft felt, we call him a sensible man.
Carlyle used to hobble about with soft shoes and soft slouch-hat, and he
was right But it is possible to be as comfortable as Lord Tennyson or
Carlyle without flying very outrageously in the face of modern
conventions; and many everyday folk contrive to keep their bodies at
ease without trying any fool's device. Charles Kingsley used to roam
about in his guernsey--most comfortable of all dresses--when he was in
the country; but when he visited the town he managed to dress easily and
elegantly in the style of an average gentleman.
But some foolish creatures say in their hearts, "Men of genius wear
strange clothing--Tennyson wears a vast Inverness cape, Carlyle wore a
duffel jacket, Bismarck wears a flat white cap, Mortimer Collins wore a
big Panama; artists in general like velvet and neckties of various gaudy
hues. Let us adopt something startling in the way of costume, and we
may be taken for men of genius." Thus it happened that very lately
London was invested by a set of simpletons of small ability in art and
letters; they let their hair grow down their backs; they drove about in
the guise of Venetian senators of the fifteenth century; they appeared
in slashed doublets and slouched hats; and one of them astonished the
public--and the cabmen--by marching down a fashionable thoroughfare on a
broiling day with a fur ulster on his back and a huge flower in his
hand. Observe my point--these social nuisances obtained for themselves a
certain contemptible notoriety by caricaturing the ways of able men. I
can forgive young Disraeli's gaudy waistcoats and pink-lined coats, but
I have no patience with his silly imitators. This is why I object to the
praise which is bestowed on men of genius for qualities which do not
deserve praise. The reckless literary admirer of Shelley or Byron goes
into ecstasies and cries, "Perish the slave who would think of these
great men's vices!"--whereupon raw and conceited youngsters say, "Vice
and eccentricity are signs of genius. We will be vicious and eccentric;"
and then they go and convert themselves into public nuisances.
That vice and folly are not always associated with genius scarcely needs
demonstrating. I allow that many great men have been sensual fools, but
we can by no means allow that folly and sensuality are inseparable from
greatness. My point is to prove that littleness must be conquered before
a man can be great or good. Macaulay lived a life of perfect and
exemplary purity; he was good in all the relations of life; those
nearest to him loved him most dearly, and his days were passed in
thinking of the happiness of others. Perhaps he was vain--certainly he
had something to be vain of--but, though he had such masterful talent,
he never thought himself licensed, and he wore the white flower of a
blameless life until his happy spirit passed easily away. Wordsworth was
a poet who will be placed on a level with Byron when an estimate of our
century's great men comes to be made. But Wordsworth lived his sweet and
pious life without in any way offending against the moral law. We must
have done with all talk about the privileges of irregular genius; a
clever man must be made to see that, while he may be as independent as
he likes, he cannot be left free to offend either the sense or the
sensibility of his neighbours. The genius must learn to conduct himself
in accordance with rational and seemly custom, or he must be brought to
his senses. When a great man's ways are merely innocently different from
those of ordinary people, by all means let him alone. For instance,
Leonardo da Vinci used often to buy caged wild-birds from their captors
and let them go free. What a lovely and lovable action! He hurt no one;
he restored the joy of life to innocent creatures, and no one could find
fault with his sweet fancy. In the same way, when Samuel Johnson chose
to stalk ponderously along the streets, stepping on the edges of the
paving-stones, or even when he happened to roar a little loudly in
conversation, who could censure him seriously? His heart was as a little
child's: his deeds were saintly; and we perhaps love him all the more
for his droll little ways. But, when Shelley outrages decency and the
healthy sense of manliness by his peculiar escapades, it is not easy to
pardon him; the image of that drowned child rises before us, and we are
apt to forget the pretty verses. Calm folk remember that many peculiarly
wicked and selfish gentry have been able to make nice rhymes and paint
charming pictures. The old poet Francois Villon, who has made men weep
and sympathize for so many years, was a burglar, a murderer, and
something baser, if possible, than either murderer or burglar. A more
despicable being probably never existed; and yet he warbles with angelic
sweetness, and his piercing sadness thrills us after the lapse of four
centuries. Young men of unrestrained appetites and negative morality are
often able to talk most charmingly, but the meanest and most unworthy
persons whom I have met have been the wild and lofty-minded poets who
perpetually express contempt of Philistines and cast the shaft of their
scorn at what they call "dross." So far as money goes, I fancy that the
oratorical, and grandiose poet is often the most greedy of individuals;
and, when, in his infinite conceit, he sets himself up above common
decency and morality, I find it difficult to confine myself to moderate
language. A man of genius may very well be chaste, modest, unselfish,
and retiring. Byron was at his worst when he was producing the works
which made him immortal; I prefer to think of him as he was when he cast
his baser self away, and nobly took up the cause of Greece. When once
his matchless common sense asserted itself, and he ceased to contemplate
his own woes and his own wrongs, he became a far greater man than he had
ever been before. I should be delighted to know that the cant about the
lowering restrictions imposed by stupidity on genius had been silenced
for ever. A man of transcendent ability must never forget that he is a
member of a community, and that he has no more right wantonly to offend
the feelings or prejudices of that community than he has to go about
buffeting individual members with a club. As soon as he offends the
common feelings of his fellows he must take the consequences; and
hard-headed persons should turn a deaf ear when any eloquent and
sentimental person chooses to whine about his hero's wrongs.
_March, 1888._
_SLANG_.