If William Makepeace Thackeray were alive to-day he would not write a
_Book of Snobs_. He might write a _Book of Reformers_.
This is the opinion of that shrewd and kindly satirist, Edward S.
Martin. I found him not in New York, the city whose lights and shadows
are reflected in much of his graceful prose and pungent verse, but out
among the Connecticut hills. In the pleasant study of his quaint
Colonial cottage he talked about the thing he delights to
observe--humanity.
"Thackeray would not write a _Book of Snobs_ to-day," he said. "The snob
is not now the appealing subject that he was in the early days of the
reign of Queen Victoria. Thackeray could not now find enough snobs and
snobbery to write about, either in England or in America. Snobs are by
way of having punctured tires these days.
"Don't you think that the snobs were always very much apart from our
civilization and national ideals? They were a symptom of an established
and conservative society. And this established and conservative society
Thackeray in his way helped to break down.
"To-day, in England and in the United States, that kind of society is in
a precarious condition. If Thackeray were now writing, he would not
satirize snobs. It is more likely that he would satirize the reformers.
I think that all the snobs have hit the sawdust trail."
"How did this happen?" I asked. "What was it that did away with the
snobs?"
"It was largely a natural process of change," said Mr. Martin. "The
snobs were put on the defensive. You see, there is a harder push of
democracy now than there was in Thackeray's time. The world of which the
snob was so conspicuous a part seems, especially since the war began, to
have passed away. Of course the literature of that world is not dead,
but for the moment it seems obsolete.
"To-day the whole attention of civilized mankind is fixed on the great
fundamental problems; there is no time for snobbery. For one thing,
there is the problem of national self-preservation. And there has
recently been before the civilized world, more strongly than ever
before, the great problem of the development of democracy.
"I suppose that the war will check, to a certain extent, the development
of democracy. In England the great task of the hour is to organize all
the powers of society for defense against attack, against attack by a
power organized for forty years for that attack.
"I suppose England will get organization out of this war. And if we get
into the war, we'll get organization out of it."
Mr. Martin is generally thought of as a critic of social rather than
political conditions. But he is keenly interested in politics. Speaking
of American politics and the possibility of America's entering the war,
he said:
"For the past fifteen years our greatest activity in politics has been
to rip things open. It seemed to most people that the organization was
getting too strong and that it was controlled by too few people. The
fight has been against that condition.
"But if we became involved in a serious war trouble the energy of our
people would be directed to an attempt to secure increased efficiency.
We would become closely organized again. I don't think we'd lose the
benefit of what has been done in the past years, but we would come to a
turn in the road.
"I suppose it would bring us all together, if we got into this war, and
I suppose we'd get some good out of it.
"You see, the people who formerly directed our Government haven't had
much power for several years. Now they are valuable people. And they
will come back into power again, but with greatly modified conditions.
"I don't think that a new set of people are going to manage the affairs
of the nation. I think that the affairs of the nation will be managed by
the people who managed them before. But these people will be much more
under control than they were before, and they will be subject to new
laws.
"How much good government by commission is going to do I don't know. We
have not as yet had good enough men to enter into this important work,
and the best of those who have entered have not stayed in this
employment. So the development of experts in government has not come
along as well as people hoped it would."
The genial philosopher smiled quizzically and rose from his chair.
"I'm afraid I'm getting too political," he said, pacing slowly up and
down the room. "Let's get back to snobs and snobbery.
"You asked me a few minutes ago why the snob had become so inconspicuous
a figure in our modern society. Well, I know one reason for this altered
condition of affairs. Woman has abolished the snob. Woman has changed
man."
"And what changed woman?" I asked.
"Many things; the development of machinery, for instance," he replied.
"Woman has not changed so much as the conditions of life have changed.
"The development of machinery has caused changes that impress me deeply.
It has produced immense alterations in the conditions of life and in the
relations between people.
"War has been changed in a striking manner by this development of
machinery. Never in the history of warfare was machinery so prominent
and important as to-day. In fact, I think I am justified in speaking of
this war as a machine-bore!
"Machinery really has had a great deal to do with changing the
condition and activities of woman, and has been a powerful influence in
bringing about the modern movement for women's suffrage. Machinery has
changed the employment of women and forced them into kinds of work which
are not domestic.
"The typewriter and the telephone have revolutionized our methods of
doing business. The typewriter and the telephone have filled our offices
with women. They are doing work which twenty years ago would have been
considered most unfeminine.
"The war is strengthening this tendency of women to take up work that is
not domestic. I have heard it said that women first got into the
undomestic kinds of business in France during the Napoleonic wars.
Napoleon wanted to have all the men out in the line of battle, so he had
girls instructed in bookkeeping and other kinds of office work.
"The business activities of Frenchwomen date from that time. And a
similar result seems to be coming out of this war. In France, in
England, in all the countries engaged in the war the women are filling
the positions left vacant by the men."
"Do you think," I asked, "that this is a good thing for civilization,
this increased activity of women in business?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Martin, musingly. "I don't know. But I do know
this, that the main employment of woman is to rear a family. Office
work, administrative work--these things are of only secondary
importance. The one vital thing for women to do is to rear families.
They must do this if the human race is to continue."
"Mr. Martin," I said, "you told me that Thackeray, if he were alive,
would satirize the reformers. Just what sort of reformer is it that has
taken the place of the snob?"
Mr. Martin did not at once answer. He smiled, as if enjoying some
entertaining memory. Then he started to speak, and mentioned the name of
a prominent reformer. But his New England caution checked him. He said:
"No, I'd better not say anything about that. I'd rather not. I'd rather
say that the things that the snobs admired and particularly embodied
have lost prestige during the last twenty years.
"After 1898, after our great rise to prosperity, the captains of
industry and of finance were the great men of the country. But I think
these great men are less stunning now than they were then. And money is
less stunning, too.
"All the business of money-making has had a great loss of prestige since
1900. People think more of other things. And the people who are thinking
of other things than money-making have more of a 'punch' than they had
before. The wise have more of a punch, and so have the foolish."
Again came that reminiscent smile. "Reformers can be very trying," he
said. "Very trying, indeed. Did you ever read Brand Whitlock's _Forty
Years of It_? Brand Whitlock had his own trials with the reformers.
Whitlock is a sensible, generous man, and his attitude toward reformers
is a good deal humorous and not at all violent. That would be
Thackeray's attitude toward them, I think, if he were living to-day.
He'd satirize the reformers instead of the snobs."
Mr. Martin is not inclined to condemn or to accept absolutely any of the
modern reform movements. "All reform movements," he said, "run until
they get a check. Then they stop. But what they have accomplished is not
lost."
The society women who undertake sociological reform work find in Mr.
Martin no unsympathetic critic.
"These wealthy women," he said, "take up reform work as a recourse.
Society life is not very filling. They have a sense of emptiness. So
they go in for reform, to fill out their lives more adequately.
"But I don't know that I'd call that kind of thing reform. I'd call it a
large form of social activity. These women are attending to a great mass
of people who need this attention. But the bulk of this kind of work is
too small for it to be called reform.
"In New York there are very many young people who need care and
leadership. The neglected and incompetent must be looked after. The
old-fashioned family control has been considerably loosened, and an
attempt must be made to guard those who are therefore less protected
than they would have been a generation ago. Certainly these efforts to
look after young people who don't have enough care taken of them by
their families are directed in the right direction."
I asked Mr. Martin what he thought of the present condition of American
literature, particularly the work presented to the public on the pages
of magazines.
"Just now," he said, "the newspapers seem to have almost everything. The
great interest of the last few years has been in the newspapers. They
have had a tremendous story to tell, they have told it every day, and
other things have seemed, in comparison, flat and lifeless.
"It has been a hard time for every sort of a publication not absolutely
up to the minute all the time. The newspapers have had the field almost
to themselves.
"And I think that the newspapers have greatly improved. They have had an
immense chance, and it has been very stimulating."
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