of social attitudes. In France, where all æsthetic discoveries are
made, it was crowned long ago: _la sainte indifférence_ is, or may
be, a cult, and _le saint indifférent_ an articled practitioner. For
the Gallic mind, brought up at the knee of a consistent paradox,
has found that not to appear concerned about a desired good is the
only method to possess it; full happiness is given, in other words,
to the very man who will never sue for it. This is a secret neat as
that of the Sphinx: to "go softly" among events, yet domineer them.
Without fear: not because we are brave, but because we are exempt; we
bear so charmed a life that not even Baldur's mistletoe can touch us
to harm us. Without solicitude: for the essential thing is trained,
falcon-like, to light from above upon our wrists, and it has
become with us an automatic motion to open the hand, and drop what
appertains to us no longer. Be it renown or a new hat, the shorter
stick of celery, or
"The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours,"
it is all one: let it fall away! since only so, by depletions,
can we buy serenity and a blithe mien. It is diverting to study,
at the feet of Antisthenes and of Socrates his master, how many
indispensables man can live without; or how many he can gather
together, make over into luxuries, and so abrogate them. Thoreau
somewhere expresses himself as full of divine pity for the "mover,"
who on May-Day clouds city streets with his melancholy household
caravans: fatal impedimenta for an immortal. No: furniture is clearly
a superstition. "I have little, I want nothing; all my treasure is
in Minerva's tower." Not that the novice may not accumulate. Rather,
let him collect beetles and Venetian interrogation-marks; if so be
that he may distinguish what is truly extrinsic to him, and bestow
these toys, eventually, on the children of Satan who clamor at the
monastery gate. Of all his store, unconsciously increased, he can
always part with sixteen-seventeenths, by way of concession to his
individuality, and think the subtraction so much concealing marble
chipped from the heroic figure of himself. He would be a donor from
the beginning; before he can be seen to own, he will disencumber, and
divide. Strange and fearful is his discovery, amid the bric-à-brac
of the world, that this knowledge, or this material benefit, is for
him alone. He would fain beg off from the acquisition, and shake the
touch of the tangible from his imperious wings. It is not enough to
cease to strive for personal favor; your true _indifférent_ is Early
Franciscan: caring not to have, he fears to hold. Things useful need
never become to him things desirable. Towards all commonly-accounted
sinecures, he bears the coldest front in Nature, like a magician
walking a maze, and scornful of its flower-bordered detentions. "I
enjoy life," says Seneca, "because I am ready to leave it." _Ja
wohl!_ and they who act with jealous respect for their morrow of
civilized comfort, reap only indigestion, and crow's-foot traceries
for their deluded eye-corners.
Now nothing is farther from _le saint indifférent_ than cheap
indifferentism, so-called: the sickness of sophomores. His business
is to hide, not to display, his lack of interest in fripperies.
It is not he who looks languid, and twiddles his thumbs for sick
misplacedness, like Achilles among girls. On the contrary, he is a
smiling industrious elf, monstrous attentive to the canons of polite
society. In relation to others, he shows what passes for animation
and enthusiasm; for at all times his character is founded on control
of these qualities, not on the absence of them. It flatters his
sense of superiority that he may thus pull wool about the ears of
joint and several. He has so strong a will that it can be crossed
and counter-crossed, as by himself, so by a dozen outsiders, without
a break in his apparent phlegm. He has gone through volition, and
come out at the other side of it; everything with him is a specific
act: he has no habits. _Le saint indifférent_ is a dramatic wight:
he loves to refuse your proffered six per cent, when, by a little
haggling, he may obtain three-and-a-half. For so he gets away with
his own mental processes virgin: it is inconceivable to you that,
being sane, he should so comport himself. Amiable, perhaps, only
by painful propulsions and sore vigilance, let him appear the mere
inheritor of easy good-nature. Unselfish out of sheer pride, and ever
eager to claim the slippery side of the pavement, or the end cut of
the roast (on the secret ground, be it understood, that he is not as
Capuan men, who wince at trifles), let him have his ironic reward
in passing for one whose physical connoisseurship is yet in the
raw. That sympathy which his rule forbids his devoting to the usual
objects, he expends, with some bravado, upon their opposites; for he
would fain seem a decent partisan of some sort, not what he is, a
bivalve intelligence, _Tros Tyriusque_. He is known here and there,
for instance, as valorous in talk; yet he is by nature a solitary,
and, for the most part, somewhat less communicative than
"The wind that sings to himself as he makes stride,
Lonely and terrible, on the Andëan height."
Imagining nothing idler than words in the face of grave events, he
condoles and congratulates with the genteelest air in the world.
In short, while there is anything expected of him, while there
are spectators to be fooled, the stratagems of the fellow prove
inexhaustible. It is only when he is quite alone that he drops his
jaw, and stretches his legs; then, heigho! arises like a smoke, and
envelops him becomingly, the beautiful native well-bred torpidity of
the gods, of poetic boredom, of "the Oxford manner."
"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable!"
sighed Hamlet of this mortal outlook. As it came from him in the
beginning, that plaint, in its sincerity, can come only from the man
of culture, who feels about him vast mental spaces and depths, and to
whom the face of creation is but comparative and symbolic. Nor will
he breathe it in the common ear, where it may woo misapprehensions,
and breed ignorant rebellion. The unlettered must ever love or hate
what is nearest him, and, for lack of perspective, think his own
fist the size of the sun. The social prizes, which, with mellowed
observers, rank as twelfth or thirteenth in order of desirability,
such as wealth and a foothold in affairs, seem to him first and sole;
and to them he clings like a barnacle. But to our _indifférent_,
nothing is so vulgar as close suction. He will never tighten his
fingers on loaned opportunity; he is a gentleman, the hero of the
habitually relaxed grasp. A light unprejudiced hold on his profits
strikes him as decent and comely, though his true artistic pleasure
is still in "fallings from us, vanishings." It costs him little to
loose and to forego, to unlace his tentacles, and from the many
who push hard behind, to retire, as it were, on a never-guessed-at
competency, "richer than untempted kings." He would not be a
life-prisoner, in ever so charming a bower. While the tranquil Sabine
Farm is his delight, well he knows that on the dark trail ahead of
him, even Sabine Farms are not sequacious. Thus he learns betimes to
play the guest under his own cedars, and, with disciplinary intent,
goes often from them; and, hearing his heart-strings snap the third
night he is away, rejoices that he is again a freedman. Where his
foot is planted (though it root not anywhere), he calls that spot
home. No Unitarian in locality, it follows that he is the best of
travellers, tangential merely, and pleased with each new vista of the
human Past. He sometimes wishes his understanding less, that he might
itch deliciously with a prejudice. With cosmic congruities, great and
general forces, he keeps, all along, a tacit understanding, such as
one has with beloved relatives at a distance; and his finger, airily
inserted in his outer pocket, is really upon the pulse of eternity.
His vocation, however, is to bury himself in the minor and immediate
task; and from his intent manner, he gets confounded, promptly and
permanently, with the victims of commercial ambition.
The true use of the much-praised Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland,
has hardly been apprehended: he is simply the patron saint of
_indifférents_. From first to last, almost alone in that discordant
time, he seems to have heard far-off resolving harmonies, and to
have been rapt away with foreknowledge. Battle, to which all knights
were bred, was penitential to him. It was but a childish means: and
to what end? He meanwhile,--and no man carried his will in better
abeyance to the scheme of the universe,--wanted no diligence in
camp or council. Cares sat handsomely on him who cared not at all,
who won small comfort from the cause which his conscience finally
espoused. He labored to be a doer, to stand well with observers;
and none save his intimate friends read his agitation and profound
weariness. "I am so much taken notice of," he writes, "for an
impatient desire for peace, that it is necessary I should likewise
make it appear how it is not out of fear for the utmost hazard of
war." And so, driven from the ardor he had to the simulation of
the ardor he lacked, loyally daring, a sacrifice to one of two
transient opinions, and inly impartial as a star, Lord Falkland
fell: the young never-to-be-forgotten martyr of Newbury field. The
imminent deed he made a work of art; and the station of the moment
the only post of honor. Life and death may be all one to such a
man: but he will at least take the noblest pains to discriminate
between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, if he has to write a book about
the variations of their antennæ. And like the Carolian exemplar
is the disciple. The _indifférent_ is a good thinker, or a good
fighter. He is no "immartial minion," as dear old Chapman suffers
Hector to call Tydides. Nevertheless, his sign-manual is content
with humble and stagnant conditions. Talk of scaling the Himalayas
of life affects him, very palpably, as "tall talk." He deals not
with things, but with the impressions and analogies of things. The
material counts for nothing with him: he has moulted it away. Not so
sure of the identity of the higher course of action as he is of his
consecrating dispositions, he feels that he may make heaven again,
out of sundries, as he goes. Shall not a beggarly duty, discharged
with perfect temper, land him in "the out-courts of Glory," quite as
successfully as a grand Sunday-school excursion to front the cruel
Paynim foe? He thinks so. Experts have thought so before him. Francis
Drake, with the national alarum instant in his ears, desired first to
win at bowls, on the Devon sward, "and afterwards to settle with the
Don." No one will claim a buccaneering hero for an _indifférent_,
however. The Jesuit novices were ball-playing almost at that very
time, three hundred years ago, when some too speculative companion,
figuring the end of the world in a few moments (with just leisure
enough, between, to be shriven in chapel, according to his own
thrifty mind), asked Louis of Gonzaga what he, on his part, should
do in the precious interval. "I should go on with the game," said
the most innocent and most ascetic youth among them. But to cite
the behavior of any of the saints is to step over the playful line
allotted. Indifference of the mundane brand is not to be confounded
with their detachment, which is emancipation wrought in the soul,
and the ineffable efflorescence of the Christian spirit. Like most
supernatural virtues, it has a laic shadow; the counsel to abstain,
and to be unsolicitous, is one not only of perfection, but also
of polity. A very little non-adhesion to common affairs, a little
reserve of unconcern, and the gay spirit of sacrifice, provide the
moral immunity which is the only real estate. The _indifférent_
believes in storms: since tales of shipwreck encompass him. But once
among his own kind, he wonders that folk should be circumvented by
merely extraneous powers! His favorite catch, woven in among escaped
dangers, rises through the roughest weather, and daunts it:
"Now strike your sailes, ye jolly mariners,
For we be come into a quiet rode."
No slave to any vicissitude, his imagination is, on the contrary,
the cheerful obstinate tyrant of all that is. He lives, as Keats
once said of himself, "in a thousand worlds," withdrawing at will
from one to another, often curtailing his circumference to enlarge
his liberty. His universe is a universe of balls, like those which
the cunning Oriental carvers make out of ivory; each entire surface
perforated with the same delicate pattern, each moving prettily
and inextricably within the other, and all but the outer one
impossible to handle. In some such innermost asylum the right sort of
devil-may-care sits smiling, while we rage or weep.
1894.
ON A PLEASING ENCOUNTER WITH A PICKPOCKET
I WAS in town the other evening, walking by myself, at my usual rapid
pace, and ruminating, in all likelihood, on the military affairs
of the Scythians, when, at a lonely street corner not adorned by
a gas-lamp, I suddenly felt a delicate stir in my upper pocket.
There is a sort of mechanical intelligence in a well-drilled and
well-treated body, which can act, in an emergency, without orders
from headquarters. My mind, certainly, was a thousand years away, and
is at best drowsy and indifferent. It had besides, no experience,
nor even hearsay, which would have directed it what to do at this
thrilling little crisis. Before it was aware what had happened, and
in the beat of a swallow's wing, my fingers had brushed the flying
thief, my eyes saw him, and my legs (retired race-horses, but still
great at a spurt) flew madly after him. I protest that from the
first, though I knew he had under his wicked thumb the hard-earned
wealth of a notoriously poor poet (let the double-faced phrase,
which I did not mean to write, stand there, under my hand, to all
posterity), yet I never felt one yearning towards it, nor conceived
the hope of revenge. No: I was fired by the exquisite dramatic
situation; I felt my blood up, like a charger
"that sees
The battle over distances."
I was in for the chase in the keen winter air, with the moon just
rising over the city roofs, as rapturously as if I were a very young
dog again. My able bandit, clearly viewed the instant of his assault,
was a tiger-lily of the genus "tough": short, pallid, sullen, with
coat-collar up and hat-brim down, and a general air of mute and
violent executive ability. My business in devoting this chapter to
reminiscences of my only enemy, is to relate frankly what were my
contemporaneous sensations. As I wheeled about, neatly losing the
chance of confronting him, and favored with a hasty survey, in the
dark, of his strategic mouth and chin, the one sentiment in me, if
translated into English, would have uttered itself in this wise:
"After years of dulness and decorum, O soul, here is some one come to
play with thee; here is Fun, sent of the immortal gods!"
This divine emissary, it was evident, had studied his ground, and
awaited no activity on the part of the preoccupied victim, in a
hostile and unfamiliar neighborhood. He suffered a shock when,
remembering my ancient prowess in the fields of E----, I took up
a gallop within an inch of his nimble heels. Silently, as he ran,
he lifted his right arm. We were soon in the blackness of an empty
lot across the road, among coal-sheds and broken tins, with the
far lights of the thoroughfare full in our faces. Quick as kobolds
summoned up from earth, air, and nowhere, four fellows, about twenty
years old, swarmed at my side, as like the first in every detail
as foresight and art could make them; and these darting, dodging,
criss-crossing, quadrilling, and incessantly interchanging as they
advanced, covering the expert one's flight, and multiplying his
identity, shot separately down a labyrinth of narrow alleys, leaving
me confused and checkmated, after a brief and unequal game, but
overcome, nay, transported with admiration and unholy sympathy! It
was the prettiest trick imaginable.
It was near Christmas; and, brought to bay, and still alone, I
conjured up a vision of a roaring cellar-fire, and the snow whistling
at the bulkhead, as the elect press in, with great slapping of hands
and stamping of shoes, to a superfine night-long and month-long
bowl of grog, MY grog, dealt out by Master Villon, with an ironic
toast to the generous founder. I might have followed the trail, as I
was neither breathless nor afraid, but it struck me that the sweet
symmetry of the thing ought not to be spoiled; that I was serving
a new use and approximating a new experience; that it would be a
stroke of genius, in short, almost equal to the king pickpocket's
own, to make love to the inevitable. Whereupon, bolstered against
an aged fence, I laughed the laugh of Dr. Johnson, "heard, in the
silence of the night, from Fleet Ditch to Temple Bar." I thought
of the good greenbacks won by my siren singing in the _Hodgepodge
Monthly_; I thought of my family, who would harbor in their memories
the inexplicable date when the munificent church-mouse waxed stingy.
I thought even of the commandment broken and of the social pact
defied, gave my collapsed pocket a friendly dig, and laughed again.
The police arrived, with queries, and ineffective note-books. I went
home, a shorn lamb, conscious of my exalted financial standing; for
had I not been robbed? All the way I walked with Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus, who came to mind promptly as my corporeal blessings
departed. He intoned no requiem for the lost, but poured a known
philosophy, in which I had now taken my degree, into my liberal ear:--
"Why shouldst thou vex thyself, that never willingly vexed anybody?"
"A man has but two concerns in life: to be honorable in what he does,
and resigned under what happens to him."
"If any one misconduct himself towards thee, what is that to thee?
The deed is his; and therefore let him look to it."
"Welcome everything that happens as necessary and familiar."
Marry, a glow of honest self-satisfaction is cheaply traded for a
wad of current specie, and an inkling into the ways of a bold and
thirsty world. Methinks I have "arrived"; I have attained a courteous
composure proof against mortal hurricanes. Life is no longer a rude
and trivial comedy with the Beautifully Bulldozed, who feels able to
warm to his own catastrophe, and even to cry, "Pray, madam, don't
mention it," to an apologizing lady in a gig, who drives over him and
kills him, and does so, moreover, in the most bungling manner in the
world.
1892.
REMINISCENCES OF A FINE GENTLEMAN
MY friend was of illustrious ancestry. While so many trace their
life-stream to pirates or usurpers who shed their brothers' blood to
possess their brothers' power, it is a distinction worth recording,
that this Fine Gentleman was descended from a princely person in
Switzerland who saved some sixty lives, and whose ancient portrait
is loaded, like a French marshal's, with the ribbons and medals of
recognition. Though of foreign origin, he did an American thing at
my introduction to him: he shook hands. I dropped the white pebble
of the Cretans to mark the day he arrived. It is needless to say
I loved and understood him,--blond, aggressive, wilful, from the
first. He had then, despite his extreme youth, the air of a fighting
aristocrat, a taking swashbuckler attitude, as he stood at the open
door: the look of one who has character, and a defined part to play,
and whose career can never reach a common nor ignoble end. Comely
in the full sense he was not; but impressive he was, despite the
precocious leanness and alertness which come of too rapid growth.
He had every opportunity, during his babyhood and later, of
gratifying his abnormal love of travel; he managed to see more of
city life than was good for him, thanks to many impish subterfuges.
His golden curiosity covered everything mundane, and he continued
his private studies in topography until he was kidnapped, and
restored by the police: an abject, shamefaced little tourist, heavy
with conscience, irresponsive to any welcomes, who sidled into
his abandoned residence, and forswore from that day his unholy
peregrinations. But he had a roaming housemate, and grew to be
supremely happy, journeying under guidance.
His temper, at the beginning, was none of the best, and took hard to
the idea of moral governance; he overcame obstacles after the fashion
of a catapult. His sense of humor was always grim: he had a smile,
wide and significant, like a kobold's; but a mere snicker, or a wink,
was foreign to his nature. With certain people he was sheer clown;
yet he discriminated, and never wore his habitual air of swaggering
consequence before any save those he was pleased to consider his
inferiors. The sagacious and protective instincts were strong in him.
For children he had the most marked indulgence and affection, an
inexhaustible gentleness, as if he found the only statecraft he could
respect among them. For their delight he made himself into a horse,
and rode many a screaming elf astride of his back for a half-mile
through the meadow, before coming to the heart of the business, which
was to sit or kneel suddenly, and cast poor Mazeppa yards away in
the wet grass: a proceeding hailed with shouts of acclaim from the
accompanying crowd of playfellows. And again, in winter, he became an
otter, and placing himself upon his worthy back at the summit of a
hill, rolled repeatedly to the bottom, drenched in snow, and buried
under a coasting avalanche of boys.
He never found time, in so short a life, to love many. Outside his
own household and his charming cat, he was very loyal to one lady
whose conversation was pleasingly ironical, and to one gentleman
whose character was said to resemble his own. Several others were
acceptable, but for these two visitors he had the voice and gesture
of joyful greeting. He had so arrant an individuality that folk
loved or hated him. One could not look with indifference on that
assertive splendid bearing, or on the mighty muscles as of a Norse
ship. A civil address from you made him your liegeman. But the
merest disregard or slight, no less than open hostility, sealed him
your foe. And there were no stages of vacillation. A grudge stood
a grudge, and a fondness a fondness. He was a famous retaliator;
none ever knew him to ride first into the lists. Battle he loved,
but he had a gentlemanly dislike of "scenes": when a crisis came,
he preferred to box or wrestle; and what he preferred he could do,
for no opponent ever left a scar upon him. A rival less in size, or
impudent solely, he took by the nape of the neck and tossed over
the nearest fence, resuming his walk with composure. Training and
education helped him to the pacific solving of many problems. His
good dispositions, all but established, were once badly shaken by a
country sojourn; for he had been taught there a bit of cabalistic
boys' Latin whose slightest whisper would send him tiptoeing to every
window in the house, scanning the horizon for a likely enemy, with a
rapture worthy of another cause.