series of papers that he once read. To this he adds his own serious
comment, and he concludes his work by suggesting an ideal. In doing
all this he makes free use of the pronoun “I,” and writes in an
informal style.=
=The work is therefore not hard and fast logic, but mature and
serious comment on life.=
Several years ago there appeared a series of papers that purported to
be the confessions of a successful man who was under no delusion as to
the essential quality of his attainments. The papers are not before me
as I write, and I must trust to memory and a few penciled notes made
at the time of their appearance, but it will be interesting to recall
his confessions regarding his education. I think they paint a fairly
faithful picture of the mind of the average college graduate.
He stated that he came from a family that prided itself on its culture
and intellectuality and that had always been a family of professional
folk. His grandfather was a clergyman; among his uncles were a lawyer,
a physician, and a professor; his sisters married professional men.
He received a fairly good primary and secondary education, and was
graduated from his university with honors. He was, he stated, of a
distinctly literary turn of mind, and during his four years at college
imbibed some slight information concerning the English classics
as well as modern history and metaphysics, so that he could talk
quite glibly about Chaucer,[136] Beaumont, and Fletcher,[137] Thomas
Love Peacock,[138] and Ann Radcliffe,[139] and speak with apparent
familiarity about Kant[140] and Schopenhauer.[141]
But, in turning to self-analysis, he stated that he later saw that his
smattering of culture was neither broad nor deep; that he acquired no
definite knowledge of the underlying principles of general history, of
economics, of languages, of mathematics, of physics, or of chemistry;
that to biology and its allies he paid scarcely any attention at
all, except to take a few snap courses; that he really secured only
a surface acquaintance with polite English literature, mostly very
modern, the main part of his time having been spent in reading
Stevenson[142] and Kipling.[143] He did well in English composition,
he said, and pronounced his words neatly and in a refined manner. He
concluded the description of his college days by saying that at the end
of his course, twenty-three years of age, he was handed an imitation
parchment degree and proclaimed by the president of the college as
belonging to the brotherhood of educated men. On this he commented:
I did not. I was an imitation educated man; but though spurious,
I was a sufficiently good counterfeit to pass current for what
I was declared to be. Apart from a little Latin, considerable
training in writing the English language, and a great deal of
miscellaneous reading of an extremely light variety, I really
had no culture at all. I could not speak an idiomatic sentence
in French or German. I had only the vaguest ideas about applied
science or mechanics and no thorough knowledge about anything; but
I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this stock in trade I
have done business ever since, with the added capital of a degree
of LL.B. Now, since graduation, twenty-seven years ago, I have
given no time to the systematic study of any subject except law. I
have read no serious works dealing with either history, sociology,
economics, art, or philosophy. I have rarely read over again any of
the masterpieces of English literature with which I had at least
a bowing acquaintance when at college. Even this last sentence I
must qualify to the extent of admitting that now I see that this
acquaintance was largely vicarious, and that I frequently read more
criticism than literature.
I was taught about Shakespeare, but not Shakespeare. I was
instructed in the history of literature, but not in literature
itself. I knew the names of the works of numerous English authors
and knew what Taine[144] and others thought about them, but I knew
comparatively little of what was between the covers of the books
themselves. I was, I find, a student of letters by proxy. As time
went on I gradually forgot that I had not in fact actually perused
these volumes, and to-day I am accustomed to refer familiarly to
works I have never read at all.
I frankly confess that my own ignorance is abysmal. In the last
twenty-seven years what information I have acquired has been picked
up principally from newspapers and magazines; yet my library table
is littered with books on modern art and philosophy and with essays
on literary and historical subjects. I do not read them. They are
my intellectual window-dressings. I talk about them with others
who, I suspect, have not read them either, and we confine ourselves
to generalities, with careful qualifications of all expressed
opinions, no matter how vague or elusive.
This quotation is made from slightly abbreviated notes and may be
guilty of some verbal variation from the text, but it is entirely
accurate as to content. As I remember the paper, the writer went on
to catalogue his educational shortcomings in the various fields of
interest, confessing fundamental ignorance, save for superficial
smatterings of information, of art, history, biography, music, poetry,
politics, science, and economics. He painted an amusing picture of
the hollow pretense of culture with which the average man of his type
covers his intellectual poverty. Men of his type speak casually, he
said, of Henry of Navarre,[145] Beatrice d'Este,[146] or Charles the
Fifth,[147] without knowing within two hundred years when any of them
lived or what was their rôle. His lack of knowledge goes deeper than
mere names and dates; it goes, he said, to the significance of events
themselves. For an illustration at random, he knew nothing about what
happened on the Italian peninsula until Garibaldi,[148] and really
never knew just who Garibaldi was until he read Trevelyan's[149] three
books on the Risorgimento, the only serious books he had read in years,
and he read them because he had taken a motor trip through Italy the
summer before. He knew virtually nothing of Spain, Russia, Poland,
Turkey, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, or Belgium. He described his
type going to the Metropolitan Opera House, hearing the best music at
big prices, content to murmur vague ecstasies over Caruso, in ignorance
of who wrote the opera or what it is all about, lacking enough virile
intellectual curiosity even to spend an hour reading about the opera in
one of the many available hand-books.
Coming to the vital matters of public affairs, he confessed that,
although holding a prominent place on the citizens' committee at
election-time, he knew nothing definite about the city's departments or
its fiscal administration. He could not direct a poor man to the place
where he might obtain relief. He knew the city hall by sight, but had
never been in it. He had never visited the Tombs[150] or the criminal
courts, never entered a police station, a fire-house, or prison of
the city. He did not know whether police magistrates were appointed or
elected, nor in what congressional district he resided. He did not know
the name of his alderman, assemblyman, state senator, or representative
in Congress. He did not know who was head of the street-cleaning,
health, fire, park, or water departments of his city. He could name
only five of the members of the Supreme Court, three of the secretaries
in the President's cabinet, and only one of the congressmen from
his State. He had never studied save in the most superficial manner
the single tax, minimum wage, free trade, protection, income tax,
inheritance tax, the referendum, the recall, and other vital questions.
Of the authorship of these anonymous confessions I know nothing. They
may have been fiction instead of biography, for all I know. But their
content would still be true were their form fiction. I have recalled
these confessions at length because in my judgment they present an
uncomfortably true analysis of the average American college graduate's
mind, his range of interests, and his grasp of those fundamentals which
underlie a citizen's worth in a democracy. It is from the college
graduates of this country that we must look for our leaders in the
complex and baffling years ahead, and it is a matter of the gravest
concern to the country if we are raising up a generation of men, into
whose hands leadership will pass, whose minds have been atrophied by
superficial study, whose imagination is unlit, who have an apathetic
indifference toward the supreme issues of our political, social, and
industrial life, who lack capacity and background for the analysis of
broad questions and for creative thinking. If these confessions of
“The Goldfish” papers tell a true story, if we are failing to produce
a leader class adequate to meet the needs of the present time, as it
seems to me there is sound evidence to prove, then it behooves us to
reëxamine, reconceive, and reorganize our colleges.
If we are to raise up adequate leadership for the future, our colleges
must contrive to give to students a genuinely liberal education that
will make them intelligent citizens of the world; an education that
will make the student at home in the modern world, able to work in
harmony with the dominant forces of his age, not at cross-purposes to
them; an education that will acquaint him with the physical, social,
economic, and political aspects, laws, and forces of his world; an
education that will furnish to the student that adequate background
and primary information needed for the interpretation of current life;
an education that will help the student to plot out the larger world
beyond the campus; an education that will give the student an interest
in those events and issues in which people generally are concerned; an
education that will enable the student to give intelligent and informed
consideration to the significant political and economic problems of
American life; an education that will provide the student with a sort
of Baedeker's[151] guide to civilization; in short, an education that
will make for that spacious-minded type of citizen which alone can
bring adequate leadership to a democracy.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. Apply the writer's criticism to work done in school.
2. What should be the purpose of public school education?
3. What advantage does the writer gain by quoting from the
“successful failure”?
4. Why does the writer give only a résumé of some of the words of
the “successful failure”?
5. What is real culture?
6. What is the difference between “passing” and “learning”?
7. What is an “imitation parchment degree”?
8. How long should a person pursue systematic study?
9. What principles should guide a person in reading books?
10. What is the difference between being “taught about Shakespeare”
and being “taught Shakespeare”?
11. What is the proper attitude toward newspaper reading?
12. What is “intellectual window-dressing”?
13. What should one know of history?
14. What should one know concerning various lands?
15. On what should real appreciation of music depend?
16. How should education contribute to political life?
17. What is the importance of education in the United States?
18. What is the basis of real leadership?
19. Make a list of the “vital matters of public affair” on which the
writer believes people should be informed.
20. On how many of these subjects are you informed?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. My Own Scholarship 11. Learning a Foreign Language
2. My School Career 12. The Value of Science
3. Public School Scholarship 13. Reading Shakespeare
4. Real Study 14. Studying Music
5. The Passing Mark 15. Newspaper Reading
6. The Best Teachers 16. The Use of a Library
7. The Study of History 17. A Real Student
8. Good Reading 18. An Educated Citizen
9. The Study of Governments 19. A Good School
10. The Purpose of Education 20. Systematic Study
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
If you cannot quote from the words of written articles you can
at least quote from what people have said in conversation. You
can also make full use of your own experience. Begin your essay,
as Mr. Frank begins his, by making some statement of actual experience.
When you have done this add original comments that will
lead, in the end, to a wise suggestion for the future. Both by the
use of the pronoun “I,” and by a certain informality of style, make
your work personal.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). Author of _The Canterbury Tales_, a
series of realistic narratives in verse.
[137] Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625). Two
of the most celebrated of Shakespeare's contemporaries. They wrote in
collaboration, and produced at least 52 plays.
[138] Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). Author of a number of highly
original and witty novels.
[139] Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823). An English novelist who wrote chiefly
of the mysterious and terrible, as in _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, her
most famous book.
[140] Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). A great German philosopher, one of the
most profound thinkers who ever lived.
[141] Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). A German philosopher noted for
his pessimistic beliefs.
[142] Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Novelist, essayist, poet and
traveler, noted for his personal appeal and the charm of his style.
[143] Rudyard Kipling (1865--). A popular present-day novelist, short
story writer and poet.
[144] Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893). A French critic, especially
noted for his _History of English Literature_.
[145] Henry of Navarre (1553-1610). King of Navarre and later King of
France, author of the celebrated _Edict of Nantes_.
[146] Beatrice d'Este (1475-1497). A beautiful and highly cultured
Duchess of Milan who, in spite of her early death, deeply influenced
the intellectual leaders of her time.
[147] Charles the Fifth (1500-1558). A masterful and virile Emperor of
the Holy Roman Empire.
[148] Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). A great Italian patriot who
aided in bringing about the unification of Italy. He was at one time a
citizen of the United States, and was employed in a candle factory on
Staten Island, New York.
[149] George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876). An English historian, author of
important works on Garibaldi.
[150] The Tombs. A New York City prison.
[151] Karl Baedeker (1801-1859). The originator of Baedeker's _Guide
Books_ to various lands.
THE DROLLERIES OF CLOTHES
By AGNES REPPLIER
_(1858-). One of the most noted American essayists. Among her books
are:_ Essays in Miniature; Essays in Idleness; In the Dozy Hours; A
Happy Half Century; Americans and Others.
=Miss Agnes Repplier for many years has kept her high place as one
of the most popular American essayists. She has written upon a
great variety of subjects, and always with charm and substantial
thought. The essay on _The Drolleries of Clothes_ shows with how
much good spirit one may write even a critical essay.=
In that engaging volume, “The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday,” Lord
Frederic Hamilton,[152] commenting on the beauty and grace of the
Austrian women, observes thoughtfully: “In the far-off seventies ladies
did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments
of material. They dressed, and their clothes fitted them. A woman upon
whom nature has bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to
the world.”
That a woman to whom nature had been less kind was compelled to display
her deficiencies is a circumstance ignored by Hamilton, who, being a
man of the world and a man of fashion, regarded clothes as the insignia
of caste. The costly costumes, the rich and sweeping draperies in
which he delighted, were not easy of imitation. The French ladies who
followed the difficult lead of the Empress Eugenia[153] supported the
transparent whiteness of their billowy skirts with at least a dozen
fine, sheer petticoats. Now it is obvious that no woman of the working
classes (except a blanchisseuse de fin[154] who might presumably wear
her customers' laundry) could afford a dozen white petticoats. But when
it comes to stripping off a solitary petticoat, no one is too poor or
too plain to be in the fashion. When it comes to clipping a dress at
the knee, the factory girl is as fashionable as the banker's daughter,
and far more at her ease. Her “abbreviated oddments” are a convenience
in the limited spaces of the mill, and she is hardier to endure
exposure. She thanks the kindly gods who have fitted the fashions to
her following, and she takes a few more inches off her solitary garment
to make sure of being in the style.
Not that women of any class regard heat or cold, comfort or discomfort,
as a controlling factor in dress. In this regard they are less highly
differentiated from the savage than are men, who, with advancing
civilization, have modified their attire into something like conformity
to climate and to season. The savage, even the savage who, like the
Tierra del Fuegian,[155] lives in a cold country, considers clothes
less as a covering than as an adornment. So also do women, who take
a simple primitive delight in garments devoid of utilitarianism. For
the past half-dozen years American women have worn furs during the
sweltering heat of American summers. Perhaps by the sea, or in the
mountains, a chill day may now and then warrant this costume; but on
the burning city streets the fur-clad females, red and panting, have
been pitiful objects to behold. They suffered, as does the Polar bear
in August in the zoo; but they suffered irrationally, and because they
lacked the wit to escape from self-inflicted torment.
For the past two winters women have worn fur coats or capes which
swathed the upper part of their bodies in voluminous folds, and stopped
short at the knee. From that point down, the thinnest of silk stockings
have been all the covering permitted. The theory that, if one part
of the body be protected, another part may safely and judiciously be
exposed, has ever been dear to the female heart. It may be her back,
her bosom, or her legs which the woman selects to exhibit. In any case
she affirms that the uncovered portions of her anatomy never feel the
cold. If they do, she endures the discomfort with the stoicism of the
savage who keeps his ornamental scars open with irritants, and she is
nerved to endurance by the same impelling motive.
This motive is not personal vanity. Vanity has had little to do with
savage, barbarous, and civilized customs. The ancient Peruvians who
deformed their heads, pressing them out of shape; the Chinese who
deform their feet, bandaging them into balls; the Africans who deform
their mouths, stretching them with wooden discs; the Borneans who
deform their ears, dragging the lobes below their shoulder blades;
the European and American women who deformed their bodies, tightening
their stays to produce the celebrated “hour-glass” waist, have all been
victims of something more powerful than vanity, the inexorable decrees
of fashion.
As a matter of fact the female mind is singularly devoid of illusions.
Women do not think their layers of fat or their protruding collar bones
beautiful and seductive. They display them because fashion makes no
allowance for personal defects, and they have not yet reached that
stage of civilization which achieves artistic sensibility, which
ordains and preserves the eternal law of fitness. They know, for
example, that nuns, waitresses, and girls in semi-military uniforms
look handsomer than they are, because of straight lines and adroit
concealment; but they fail to derive from this knowledge any practical
guidance.
I can remember when “pull-back” skirts and bustles were in style. They
were uncomfortable, unsanitary, and unsightly. Their wearers looked
grotesquely deformed, and knew it. They submitted to fate, and prayed
for a speedy deliverance. The fluctuations of fashion are alternately a
[Illustration: =“The fluctuations of fashion are alternately a grievance
and a solace.”=] (_page 280_)
grievance and a solace. John Evelyn,[156] commenting on the dress worn
by Englishmen in the time of Charles the First,[157] says that it was
“a comely and manly habit, too good to hold.” It did not hold because
the Puritans, who saw no reason why manliness should be comely, swept
it aside. The bustle was much too bad to hold. It grew beautifully less
every year, and then suddenly disappeared. Many dry eyes witnessed its
departure.
If abhorrence of a fashion cannot keep women from slavishly following
it, they naturally remain unmoved by outside counsel and criticism.
For years the doctors exhausted themselves proclaiming the disastrous
consequences of tight-lacing, which must certainly be held responsible
for the obsolete custom of fainting. For years satirists and moralists
united in attacking the crinoline. In _Watson's Annals_, 1856, a
virtuous Philadelphian published a solemn protest against Christian
ladies wearing enormous hoops to church, thereby scandalizing and, what
was worse, inconveniencing the male congregation. When the Great War
started a wave of fatuous extravagance, it was solemnly reported that
Mrs. Lloyd George was endeavoring to dissuade the wives of workingmen
from buying silk stockings and fur coats. When the Great Peace let
loose upon us the most fantastic absurdities known for half a century,
the papers bristled with such hopeful headlines as these: “Club Women
Approve Sensible Styles of Dress,” “Social Leaders Condemn Indecorous
Fashions,” “Crusade in Churches Against Prevailing Scantiness of
Attire,” and so on, and so on indefinitely.
And to what purpose? The unrest of a rapidly changing world broke down
the old supremacies, smashed all appreciable standards, and left us
only a vague clutter of impressions. When a woman's dress no longer
indicates her fortune, station, age, or honesty, we have reached the
twilight of taste; but such dim, confused periods are recurrent in
the history of sociology. The girl who works hard and decently for
daily bread, but who walks the streets with her little nose whitened
like concrete, and her little cheeks reddened like brick-dust, and
her little under-nourished body painfully evidenced to the crowd, is
tremulously imitating the woman of the town; but the most inexperienced
eye catalogues her at a glance. Let us be grateful for her sake if she
bobs her hair, for that is a cleanly custom, whereas the great knobs
which she formerly wore over her ears harbored nests of vermin. It is
one of the comedies of fashion that short hair, which half a century
ago indicated strongmindedness, now represents the utmost levity; just
as the bloomers of 1852 stood for stern reform, and the attempted
trousers of 1918 stood for lawlessness. Both were rejected by women
who have never been unaware that the skirt carries with it an infinite
variety of possibilities.
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,
wrote Evelyn's contemporary, Herrick,[158] who was more concerned with
the comeliness of Julia's clothes than with his own.
There is still self-revelation in dress, but not personal
self-revelation. We may still apply the test of costume to people and
to periods, but not safely to individuals, who suffer from coercion.
Women's ready-made clothes are becoming more and more like liveries. A
dozen shop windows, a dozen establishments, display the same model over
and over again, the materials and prices varying, the gown always the
same. The lines may lack distinction, and the colors may lack serenity;
but then distinction and serenity are not the great underlying
qualities of our fretted age. The “abbreviated oddments,” with their
strange admixture of the bizarre and the commonplace, strike a purely
modern note. They are democratic. They are as appropriate, or, I might
say, as inappropriate, to one class of women as to another. They are
helping, more than we can know, to level the barriers of caste.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. Summarize what the essay says in criticism of modern fashions.
2. What does the essay say concerning fashions in the past?