Tickets for Tea, Coffee, Sandwiches, Iced Drinks, or Ices, Sixpence
each, etc., etc.
I hope my American reader is pleased and interested by this glimpse of
the way in which they do these things in London.
There is something very pleasant about all this, but what specially
strikes me is a curious flavor of city provincialism. There are
little centres in the heart of great cities, just as there are small
fresh-water ponds in great islands with the salt sea roaring all round
them, and bays and creeks penetrating them as briny as the ocean itself.
Irving has given a charming picture of such a quasi-provincial centre
in one of his papers in the Sketch-Book,--the one with the title
“Little Britain.” London is a nation of itself, and contains provinces,
districts, foreign communities, villages, parishes,--innumerable lesser
centres, with their own distinguishing characteristics, habits,
pursuit, languages, social laws, as much isolated from each other as if
“mountains interposed” made the separation between them. One of these
lesser centres is that over which my friend Mr. Haweis presides as
spiritual director. Chelsea has been made famous as the home of many
authors and artists,--above all, as the residence of Carlyle during the
greater part of his life. Its population, like that of most respectable
suburbs, must belong mainly to the kind of citizens which resembles in
many ways the better class,--as we sometimes dare to call it,--of one of
our thriving New England towns. How many John Gilpins there must be in
this population,--citizens of “famous London town,” but living with
the simplicity of the inhabitants of our inland villages! In the mighty
metropolis where the wealth of the world displays itself they practise
their snug economies, enjoy their simple pleasures, and look upon
ice-cream as a luxury, just as if they were living on the banks of the
Connecticut or the Housatonic, in regions where the summer locusts
of the great cities have not yet settled on the verdure of the native
inhabitants. It is delightful to realize the fact that while the West
End of London is flaunting its splendors and the East End in struggling
with its miseries, these great middle-class communities are living as
comfortable, unpretending lives as if they were in one of our thriving
townships in the huckleberry-districts. Human beings are wonderfully
alike when they are placed in similar conditions.
We were sitting together in a very quiet way over our teacups. The young
Doctor, who was in the best of spirits, had been laughing and chatting
with the two Annexes. The Tutor, who always sits next to Number Five of
late, had been conversing with her in rather low tones. The rest of us
had been soberly sipping our tea, and when the Doctor and the Annexes
stopped talking there was one of those dead silences which are sometimes
so hard to break in upon, and so awkward while they last. All at once
Number Seven exploded in a loud laugh, which startled everybody at the
table.
What is it that sets you laughing so? said I.
“I was thinking,” Number Seven replied, “of what you said the other day
of poetry being only the ashes of emotion. I believe that some people
are disposed to dispute the proposition. I have been putting your
doctrine to the test. In doing it I made some rhymes,--the first and
only ones I ever made. I will suppose a case of very exciting emotion,
and see whether it would probably take the form of poetry or prose. You
are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, and have to scramble
out of it, without stopping to tie your neck-cloth neatly or to put
a flower in your buttonhole. Do you think a poet turning out in his
night-dress, and looking on while the flames were swallowing his home
and all its contents, would express himself in this style?
“My house is on fire!
Bring me my lyre!
Like the flames that rise heavenward my song shall aspire!
“He would n't do any such thing, and you know he wouldn't. He would yell
Fire! Fire! with all his might. Not much rhyming for him just yet! Wait
until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the charred
timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may
possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an
offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified
proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his
hat while he knelt before her?
“My beloved, to you
I will always be true.
Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do! do! do!
“What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted her with a rhyming
dictionary in his pocket to help him make love?”
You are right, said I,--there's nothing in the world like rhymes to cool
off a man's passion. You look at a blacksmith working on a bit of iron
or steel. Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, in the
midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or
the horse-shoe as red or as white as the burning coals. How it fizzes as
it goes into the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow is
gone! It looks black and cold enough now. Just so with your passionate
incandescence. It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your
emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the
minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as
dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold
on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat.
Just so with the rhyming fellow,--he pounds away on his verses and
they warm up a little. But don't let him think that this afterglow
of composition is the same thing as the original passion. That found
expression in a few oh, oh's, eheu's, helas, helas's, and when the
passion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I
have said, are its ashes.
I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustration of my thesis. There
is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows
how to profit by it. We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a
fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the
other side. I speak metaphorically. He takes new and startling views
of things we have always looked at in one particular aspect. There is a
rule invariably to be observed with one of this class of intelligences:
Never contradict a man with a squinting brain. I say a man, because I
do not think that squinting brains are nearly so common in women as they
are in men. The “eccentrics” are, I think, for the most part of the male
sex.
That leads me to say that persons with a strong instinctive tendency to
contradiction are apt to become unprofitable companions. Our thoughts
are plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chilling
atmospheres. They are all started under glass, so to speak; that is,
sheltered and fostered in our own warm and sunny consciousness. They
must expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash from the frame
and let the outside elements in upon them. They can bear the rain and
the breezes, and be all the better for them; but perpetual contradiction
is a pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and tends to kill them
out altogether.
Now stop and consider a moment. Are not almost all brains a little
wanting in bilateral symmetry? Do you not find in persons whom you love,
whom you esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in mental
vision? Are there not some subjects in looking at which it seems to you
impossible that they should ever see straight? Are there not moods in
which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all things out
of plumb and in false relations with each other? If you answer these
questions in the affirmative, then you will be glad of a hint as to
the method of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cerebral
strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms of perversity. Let
them have their head. Get them talking on subjects that interest them.
As a rule, nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than letting
them talk about themselves; if authors, about their writings; if
artists, about their pictures or statues; and generally on whatever they
have most pride in and think most of their own relations with.
Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that
slight mental obliquity is as common as I suppose. An analogy may have
some influence on your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble
to ask your tailor how many persons have their two shoulders of the same
height? I think he will tell you that the majority of his customers
show a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a
portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hint have both sides of
their faces exactly alike? I believe he will tell you that one side is
always a little better than the other. What will your hatter say about
the two sides of the head? Do you see equally well with both eyes,
and hear equally well with both ears? Few persons past middle age will
pretend that they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not show a
natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly
to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great
deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of
ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and
practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence
is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.
I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my own conversation and
that of the other Teacups. I have told some of the circumstances of
their personal history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a
reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our
pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted
that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait;
for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into
business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles
his nose with an eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles.
So that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only
wish the pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with
a reasonable amount of health in the community on whose ailings must
depend their prosperity.
All our thoughts are now concentrated on the relation existing between
Number Five and the Tutor. That there is some profound instinctive
impulse which is drawing them closer together no one who watches them
can for a moment doubt. There are two principles of attraction which
bring different natures together: that in which the two natures closely
resemble each other, and that in which one is complementary of the
other. In the first case, they coalesce, as do two drops of water or
of mercury, and become intimately blended as soon as they touch; in the
other, they rush together as an acid and an alkali unite, predestined
from eternity to find all they most needed in each other. What is the
condition of things in the growing intimacy of Number Five and the
Tutor? He is many years her junior, as we know. Both of them look that
fact squarely in the face. The presumption is against the union of two
persons under these circumstances. Presumptions are strong obstacles
against any result we wish to attain, but half our work in life is to
overcome them. A great many results look in the distance like six-foot
walls, and when we get nearer prove to be only five-foot hurdles, to be
leaped over or knocked down. Twenty years from now she may be a vigorous
and active old woman, and he a middle-aged, half-worn-out invalid, like
so many overworked scholars. Everything depends on the number of
drops of the elixir vitae which Nature mingled in the nourishment she
administered to the embryo before it tasted its mother's milk. Think
of Cleopatra, the bewitching old mischief-maker; think of Ninon de
L'Enclos, whose own son fell desperately in love with her, not knowing
the relation in which she stood to him; think of Dr. Johnson's friend,
Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs. Piozzi, who at the age of eighty was full
enough of life to be making love ardently and persistently to Conway,
the handsome young actor. I can readily believe that Number Five will
outlive the Tutor, even if he is fortunate enough rather in winning
his way into the fortress through gates that open to him of their own
accord. If he fails in his siege, I do really believe he will die early;
not of a broken heart, exactly, but of a heart starved, with the food
it was craving close to it, but unattainable. I have, therefore, a deep
interest in knowing how Number Five and the Tutor are getting along
together. Is there any danger of one or the other growing tired of the
intimacy, and becoming willing to get rid of it, like a garment which
has shrunk and grown too tight? Is it likely that some other attraction
may come into disturb the existing relation? The problem is to my mind
not only interesting, but exceptionally curious. You remember the
story of Cymon and Iphigenia as Dryden tells it. The poor youth has the
capacity of loving, but it lies hidden in his undeveloped nature. All at
once he comes upon the sleeping beauty, and is awakened by her charms to
a hitherto unfelt consciousness. With the advent of the new passion all
his dormant faculties start into life, and the seeming simpleton
becomes the bright and intelligent lover. The case of Number Five is as
different from that of Cymon as it could well be. All her faculties are
wide awake, but one emotional side of her nature has never been called
into active exercise. Why has she never been in love with any one of her
suitors? Because she liked too many of them. Do you happen to remember a
poem printed among these papers, entitled “I Like You and I Love You”?
No one of the poems which have been placed in the urn,--that is, in the
silver sugar-bowl,--has had any name attached to it; but you could guess
pretty nearly who was the author of some of them, certainly of the one
just, referred to. Number Five was attracted to the Tutor from the first
time he spoke to her. She dreamed about him that night, and nothing
idealizes and renders fascinating one in whom we have already an
interest like dreaming of him or of her. Many a calm suitor has been
made passionate by a dream; many a passionate lover has been made wild
and half beside himself by a dream; and now and then an infatuated
but hapless lover, waking from a dream of bliss to a cold reality of
wretchedness, has helped himself to eternity before he was summoned to
the table.
Since Number Five had dreamed about the Tutor, he had been more in her
waking thoughts than she was willing to acknowledge. These thoughts
were vague, it is true,--emotions, perhaps, rather than worded trains of
ideas; but she was conscious of a pleasing excitement as his name or
his image floated across her consciousness; she sometimes sighed as
she looked over the last passage they had read from the same book, and
sometimes when they were together they were silent too long,--too long!
What were they thinking of?
And so it was all as plain sailing for Number Five and the young Tutor
as it had been for Delilah and the young Doctor, was it? Do you think
so? Then you do not understand Number Five. Many a woman has as many
atmospheric rings about her as the planet Saturn. Three are easily to be
recognized. First, there is the wide ring of attraction which draws into
itself all that once cross its outer border. These revolve about her
without ever coming any nearer. Next is the inner ring of attraction.
Those who come within its irresistible influence are drawn so close that
it seems as if they must become one with her sooner or later. But within
this ring is another,--an atmospheric girdle, one of repulsion, which
love, no matter how enterprising, no matter how prevailing or how
insinuating, has never passed, and, if we judge of what is to be by what
has been, never will. Perhaps Nature loved Number Five so well that
she grudged her to any mortal man, and gave her this inner girdle of
repulsion to guard her from all who would know her too nearly and love
her too well. Sometimes two vessels at sea keep each other company for
a long distance, it may be daring a whole voyage. Very pleasant it is to
each to have a companion to exchange signals with from time to time; to
came near enough, when the winds are light, to hold converse in ordinary
tones from deck to deck; to know that, in case of need, there's help at
hand. It is good for them to be near each other, but not good to be too
near. Woe is to them if they touch! The wreck of one or both is likely
to be the consequence. And so two well-equipped and heavily freighted
natures may be the best of companions to each other, and yet must never
attempt to come into closer union. Is this the condition of affairs
between Number Five and the Tutor? I hope not, for I want them to be
joined together in that dearest of intimacies, which, if founded in true
affinity, is the nearest approach to happiness to be looked for in our
mortal, experience. We mast wait. The Teacups will meet once more before
the circle is broken, and we may, perhaps, find the solution of the
question we have raised.
In the mean time, our young Doctor is playing truant oftener than ever.
He has brought Avis,--if we must call her so, and not Delilah,--several
times to take tea with us. It means something, in these days, to
graduate from one of our first-class academies or collegiate schools. I
shall never forget my first visit to one of these institutions. How
much its pupils know, I said, which I was never taught, and have never
learned! I was fairly frightened to see what a teaching apparatus was
provided for them. I should think the first thing to be done with most
of the husbands, they are likely to get would be to put them through
a course of instruction. The young wives must find their lords wofully
ignorant, in a large proportion of cases. When the wife has educated the
husband to such a point that she can invite him to work out a problem in
the higher mathematics or to perform a difficult chemical analysis with
her as his collaborator, as less instructed dames ask their husbands
to play a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have delightful and
instructive evenings together. I hope our young Doctor will take kindly
to his wife's (that is to be) teachings.
When the following verses were taken out of the urn, the Mistress asked
me to hand the manuscript to the young Doctor to read. I noticed that he
did not keep his eyes very closely fixed on the paper. It seemed as if
he could have recited the lines without referring to the manuscript at
all.