he has included two admirable criticisms on Mr. Robert Louis
Stevenson’s poetry, and on Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s prose. These papers,
discriminating, sympathetic, and exhaustive, are called pastels. They do
not differ in any way from other critical studies of equal length and
merit. They abound in agreeable quotations, and show a clear and genial
appreciation of their themes. They are simply reviews of an unusually
good order, and if their title be correctly applied, then it is
serviceable for any piece of literary criticism which deals with a
single author. Macaulay’s “Madame D’Arblay,” Mr. Birrell’s “Emerson,”
Mr. Saintsbury’s “Peacock,” might all have been named pastels.
By this time the subject begins to grow perplexing. Miss Wilkins wanders
far from her true gods, and from the sources of her genuine inspiration,
to write a handful of labored sketches--pen pictures perhaps, albeit a
trifle stiff in execution--which she calls pastels. Mr. Brander Matthews
gives us, as his contribution to the puzzle, a vivid description of
Carmencita dancing in a New York studio, and calls it a pastel. If we
stray from prose to verse, we are tripped up at every step. Nebulous
little couplets, songs of saddening subtlety, weird conceits and
high-pacing rhymes are thoughtfully labeled pastels, so as to give us a
clue to their otherwise impenetrable obscurity. Sullen seas, and wan
twilights, and dim garden paths, relieved with ghostly lilies, and
white-armed women of dubious decorum, are the chief ingredients of these
poetic novelties; but here is one, picked up by chance, which reads like
a genial conundrum:--
“The light of our cigarettes
Went and came in the gloom;
It was dark in the little room.
Dark, and then in the dark,
Sudden, a flash, a glow,
And a hand and a ring I know.
And then, through the dark, a flush,
Ruddy and vague, the grace--
A rose--of her lyric face.”
Now, if that be a pastel, and Mr. Gosse’s reviews are pastels, and M.
Bourget’s stories are pastels, and Maurice de Guérin’s “Centaur” is a
pastel, and Mr. Brander Matthews’ realistic sketches are pastels, and
Ephraïm Mikhaël’s allegories are pastels, I should like to be told, by
some one who knows, just where the limits of the term is set.
GUESTS.
A very charming and vivacious old lady, who had spent most of her early
life in the country, once said to me that the keenest pleasure of her
childhood was the occasional arrival of her mother’s guests; the keenest
regret, their inevitable and too speedy departure. “They seldom stayed
more than a fortnight,” she observed, plaintively; “though now and then
some cousins prolonged their visits for another week. What I most
enjoyed on these occasions was the increased good temper of my own
family. Annoyances were laughed at, our noisy behavior was overlooked,
conversation took an agreeable turn, and a delightful air of
cheerfulness and good humor pervaded the entire household. It seemed to
my infant eyes that life would be a matter of flawless enjoyment if we
could only have visitors always in the house.”
A little of this frankly expressed sentiment will find an echo in many
hearts, and perhaps awaken some pangs of conscience on the way. It is
the restraint we put upon ourselves, the honest effort we make at
amiability, which renders social intercourse possible and pleasant. When
the restraint grows irksome, the amiability a burden, we pay to those we
love best on earth the dubious compliment of being perfectly natural in
their company. “What is the use of having a family if you cannot be
disagreeable in the bosom of it?” was the explicit acknowledgment I once
overheard of a service which seldom meets with such clear and candid
recognition. Hazlitt himself could have given no plainer expression to a
thought which few of us would care to trick out in all the undisguised
sincerity of language.
Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui. It is the
steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at
which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more
work and amusement than it can profitably hold, which have cost us,
among other good things, the undisturbed enjoyment of our friends.
Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it. We have to go to
so many teas, and lectures, and committee meetings; we have taken up so
many interesting and exacting careers; we have assumed so many duties
and responsibilities, that there is not a spare corner in our lives
which we are free to fill up as we please. Society, philanthropy, and
culture divide our waking hours. Defrauded friendship gets a few moments
now and again, and is bidden to content itself, and please not to be
troublesome any more. I once rashly asked a girl of twenty if she saw a
great deal of a young married woman whom she had just declared to be her
dearest and most cherished friend. “I never see her at all,” was the
satisfied answer, “except by chance, at a tea or a club meeting. We live
so very far apart, as you know. _It would take the heart of an afternoon
to try and make her a visit._”
Now, to understand the charm of leisurely and sympathetic intercourse,
we should read the letters of Madame de Sévigné; to appreciate the
resources of ennui, we should read the novels of Jane Austen. With
Madame de Sévigné guests were not useful as an alleviation of boredom;
they were valuable because they added to the interest, the beauty and
the zest of life. It never occurred to this charming Frenchwoman, nor
to her contemporaries, that time could be better spent than in
entertaining or being entertained by friends. Conversation was not then
small coin, to be paid our hastily like car-fare, merely in order to get
from one necessary topic to another. It was the golden mean through
which a generous regard, a graceful courtesy, or a sparkling wit lent
beauty and distinction to every hour of intercourse. A little group of
friends in a quiet countryside, with none of the robust diversions of
English rural life. It has a sleepy sound; yet such was the
pleasure-giving power of hostess and of guest that this leisurely
companionship was fraught with fine delight, and its fruits are our
inheritance to-day, lingering for us in the pages of those matchless
letters from which time can never steal the charm.
It is Miss Austen, however, who, with relentless candor, has shown us
how usefully guests may be employed as an antidote for the ennui of
intellectual vacuity. They are the chosen relief for that direful
dullness which country gentlemen “like Sir John Middleton,” experience
from lack of occupation and ideas; they are the solace of sickly,
uninteresting women who desire some one to share with them the
monotonous current of existence. The Middletons, we are assured, “lived
in a style of equal hospitality and elegance. They were scarcely ever
without some friends staying with them in the house, and they kept more
company of every kind than any other family in the neighborhood.” This
indulgence, it appears, while equally welcome to host and hostess, was
more necessary to Sir John’s happiness than to his wife’s; for she at
least possessed one other source of continual and unflagging diversion.
“Sir John was a sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot,
and she humored her children; and these were their only resources. Lady
Middleton, however, had the advantage of being able to spoil her
children all the year round, while Sir John’s independent employments
were in existence only half the time.”
Guests play an important part in Miss Austen’s novels, as they did in
Miss Austen’s life, and in the lives of all the hospitable
country-people of her time. Moreover, the visits her heroines and their
friends pay are not little trifling modern affairs of a few days or a
week. Distances counted for something when they had to be traveled in a
carriage or a post-chaise; and when people came to see their friends in
that fashion, they came to stay. Elizabeth Bennet and Maria Lucas spend
six weeks with Charlotte Collins; and Lady Catherine, it will be
remembered, does not at all approve of their returning home so quickly.
“I expected you to stay two months,” she says severely--they are not her
guests at all--“I told Mrs. Collins so, before you came. There can be no
occasion for your going so soon.” Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood begin
their visit to Mrs. Jennings the first week of January, and it is April
before we find them setting forth on their return. Anne Elliot goes to
Uppercross for two months, though the only inducement offered her is
Mary Musgrove’s prophetic remark that she does not expect to have a
day’s health all autumn; and her only pastime as a visitor appears to be
the somewhat dubious diversion of making herself generally useful. It is
a far cry from our busy age to either Miss Austen or Madame de Sévigné.
The bounteous resources of a highly cultivated leisure have never been
very clearly understood by the English-speaking race. The alleviations
of inactivity and ennui are no longer with us a rigorous necessity. Our
vices and our virtues conspire to defraud us of that charming and
sustained social intercourse which is possible only when we have the
undisturbed possession of our friends; when we are so happy as to be
sheltered under the same roof, to pursue the same occupations, to enjoy
the same pleasures, to exchange thoughts and sentiments with entire
freedom and familiarity. “I cannot afford to speak much to my friend,”
says Emerson, meaning that it is a privilege he neither values nor
desires. We cannot afford to speak much to our friends, though we may
desire it with our whole hearts, because we have been foolish enough to
persuade ourselves that we have other and better things to do.
SYMPATHY.
“Sympathy,” says Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, “is a thing to be
encouraged, apart from human considerations, because it supplies us with
materials for wisdom. It is probably more instructive to entertain a
sneaking kindness for any unpopular person than to give way to perfect
raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices.”
These are brave words, and spoken in one of those swift flashes of
spiritual insight which at first bewilder and then console us. We have
our share of sympathy; hearty, healthy, human sympathy for all that is
strong and successful; but the force of moral indignation--either our
own or our neighbors’--has well-nigh cowed us into silence. The fashion
of the day provides a procrustean standard for every form of
distinction; and, if it does not fit, it is lopped down to the necessary
insignificance. Those stern, efficient, one-sided men of action who made
history at the expense of their finer natures; those fiery enthusiasts
who bore down all just opposition to their designs; those loyal servants
who saw no right nor wrong save in the will of their sovereigns; those
keen-eyed statesmen who served their countries with craft, and guile,
and dissimulation; those light-hearted prodigals who flung away their
lives with a smile;--are none of these to yield us either edification or
delight? “Do great deeds, and they will sing themselves,” says Emerson;
but it must be confessed the songs are often of a very dismal and
enervating character. Columbus did a great deed when he crossed the
ocean and discovered the fair, unknown land of promise; yet many of the
songs in which we sing his fame sound a good deal like pæans of
reproach. The prevailing sentiment appears to be that a person so
manifestly ignorant and improper should never have been permitted to
discover America at all.
This sickly tone is mirrored in much of the depressing literature of our
day. It finds amplest expression in such joyless books as “The Heavenly
Twins,” the heroine of which remarks with commendable self-confidence
that “The trade of governing is a coarse pursuit;” and also that “War is
the dirty work of a nation; one of the indecencies of life.” She cannot
even endure to hear it alluded to when she is near; but, like Athene,
whose father, Zeus, “by chance spake of love matters in her presence,”
she flies chastely from the very sound of such ill-doing. Now on first
reading this sensitive criticism, one is tempted to a great shout of
laughter, quite as coarse, I fear, as the pursuit of governing, and
almost as indecent as war. Ah! founders of empires, and masters of men,
where are your laurels now? “If some people in public life were
acquainted with Mrs. Wititterly’s real opinion of them,” says Mr.
Wititterly to Kate Nickleby, “they would not hold their heads perhaps
quite as high as they do.” But in moments of soberness such distorted
points of view seem rather more melancholy than diverting. Evadne is,
after all, but the feeble reflex of an over-anxious age which has lost
itself in a labyrinth of responsibilities. Shelley, whose rigidity of
mind was at times almost inconceivable, did not hesitate to deny every
attribute of greatness wherever he felt no sympathy. To him,
Constantine was a “Christian reptile,” a “stupid and wicked monster;”
while of Napoleon he writes with the invincible gravity of youth.
“Buonaparte’s talents appear to me altogether contemptible and
commonplace; incapable as he is of comparing connectedly the most
obvious propositions, or relishing any pleasure truly enrapturing.”
To the mundane and unpoetic mind it would seem that there were several
propositions, obvious or otherwise, which Napoleon was capable of
comparing quite connectedly, and that his ruthless, luminous fashion of
dealing with such made him more terrible than fate. As for pleasures, he
knew how to read and relish “Clarissa Harlowe,” for which evidence of
sound literary taste, one Englishman at least, Hazlitt, honored and
loved him greatly. If we are seeking an embodiment of unrelieved
excellence who will work up well into moral anecdotes and journalistic
platitudes, the emperor is plainly not what we require. But when we have
great men under consideration, let us at least think of their greatness.
Let us permit our little hearts to expand, and our little eyes to sweep
a broad horizon. There is nothing in the world I dislike so much as to
be reminded of Napoleon’s rudeness to Madame de Staël, or of Cæsar’s
vain attempt to hide his baldness. Cæsar was human; that is his charm;
and Madame de Staël would have sorely strained the courtesy of good King
Arthur. Had she attached herself unflinchingly to his court, it is
probable he would have ended by requesting her to go elsewhere.
On the other hand, it is never worth while to assert that genius repeals
the decalogue. We cannot believe with M. Waliszewski that because
Catherine of Russia was a great ruler she was, even in the smallest
degree, privileged to be an immoral woman, to give “free course to her
senses imperially.” The same commandment binds with equal rigor both
empress and costermonger. But it is the greatness of Catherine, and not
her immorality, which concerns us deeply. It is the greatness of
Marlborough, of Richelieu, and of Sir Robert Walpole which we do well to
consider, and not their shortcomings, though from the tone assumed too
often by critics and historians, one would imagine that duplicity,
ambition and cynicism were the only attributes these men possessed; that
they stood for their vices alone. One would imagine also that the same
sins were quite unfamiliar in humble life, and had never been practised
on a petty scale by lawyers and journalists and bank clerks. Yet vice,
as Sir Thomas Browne reminds us, may be had at all prices. “Expensive
and costly iniquities which make the noise cannot be every man’s sins;
but the soul may be foully inquinated at a very low rate, and a man may
be cheaply vicious to his own perdition.”
It is possible then to overdo moral criticism, and to cheat ourselves
out of both pleasure and profit by narrowing our sympathies, and by
applying modern or national standards to men of other ages and of
another race. Instead of realizing, with Carlyle, that eminence of any
kind is a most wholesome thing to contemplate and to revere, we are
perpetually longing for some crucial test which will divide true
heroism--as we now regard it--from those forceful qualities which the
world has hitherto been content to call heroic. I have heard people
gravely discuss the possibility of excluding from histories, from school
histories especially, the adjective “great,” wherever it is used to
imply success unaccompanied by moral excellence. Alfred the Great might
be permitted to retain his title. Like the “blameless Ethiops,” he is
safely sheltered from our too penetrating observation. But Alexander,
Frederick, Catherine, and Louis should be handed down to future ages as
the “well-known.” Alexander the Well-Known! We can all say that with
clear consciences, and without implying any sympathy or regard for a
person so manifestly irregular in his habits, and seemingly so devoid of
all altruistic emotions. It is true that Mr. Addington Symonds has
traced a resemblance between the Macedonian conqueror, and the ideal
warrior of the Grecian camp, Achilles the strong-armed and terrible.
Alexander, he maintains, is Achilles in the flesh; passionate,
uncontrolled, with an innate sense of what is great and noble; but
“dragged in the mire of the world and enthralled by the necessities of
human life.” The difference between them is but the difference between
the heroic conception of a poet and the stern limitations of reality.
Apart, however, from the fact that Mr. Symonds was not always what the
undergraduate lightly calls “up in ethics,” it is to be feared that
Achilles himself meets with scant favor in our benevolent age. “Homer
mirrors the world’s young manhood;” but we have grown old and exemplary,
and shake our heads over the lusty fierceness of the warrior, and the
facile repentance of Helen, and the wicked wiles of Circe, which do not
appear to have met with the universal reprobation they deserve. On the
contrary, there is a blithe good-temper in the poet’s treatment of the
enchantress, whose very name is so charming it disarms all wrath. Circe!
The word is sweet upon our lips; and this light-hearted embodiment of
beauty and malice is not to be judged from the bleak stand-point of
Salem witch-hunters. If we are content to take men and women, in and out
of books, with their edification disguised, we may pass a great many
agreeable hours in their society, and find ourselves unexpectedly
benefited even by those who appear least meritorious in our eyes. A
frank and generous sympathy for any much maligned and sorely slandered
character,--such, for instance, as Graham of Claverhouse; a candid
recognition of his splendid virtues and of his single vice; a clear
conception of his temperament, his ability, and his work,--these things
are of more real service in broadening our appreciations, and
interpreting our judgments, than are a score of unqualified opinions
taken ready-made from the most admirable historians in Christendom. It
is a liberal education to recognize, and to endeavor to understand any
form of eminence which the records of mankind reveal.
As for the popular criticism which fastens on a feature and calls it a
man, nothing can be easier or more delusive. Claverhouse was merciless
and densely intolerant; but he was also loyal, brave, and reverent;
temperate in his habits, cleanly in his life, and one of the first
soldiers of his day. Surely this leaves some little balance in his
favor. Marlborough may have been as false as Judas and as ambitious as
Lucifer; but he was also the greatest of English-speaking generals, and
England owes him something better than picturesque invectives. What can
we say to people who talk to us anxiously about Byron’s unkindness to
Leigh Hunt, and Dr. Johnson’s illiberal attitude towards Methodism, and
Scott’s incomprehensible friendship for John Ballantyne; who remind us
with austere dissatisfaction that Goldsmith did not pay his debts, and
that Lamb drank more than was good for him, and that Dickens dressed
loudly and wore flashy jewelry? I don’t care what Dickens wore. I would
not care if he had decorated himself with bangles, and anklets, and
earrings, and a nose-ring, provided he wrote “Pickwick” and “David
Copperfield.” If there be any living novelist who can give us such
another as Sam Weller, or Dick Swiveller, or Mr. Micawber, or Mrs. Gamp,
or Mrs. Nickleby, let him festoon himself with gauds from head to foot,
and wedge his fingers “knuckle-deep with rings,” like the lady in the
old song, and then sit down and write. The world will readily forgive
him his embellishments. It has forgiven Flaubert his dressing-gown, and
George Sand her eccentricities of attire, and Goldsmith his coat of
Tyrian bloom, and the blue silk breeches for which he probably never
paid his tailor. It has forgiven Dr. Johnson all his little sins; and
Lamb the only sin for which he craves forgiveness; and Scott--but here
we are not privileged even to offer pardon. “It ill becomes either you
or me to compare ourselves with Scott,” said Thackeray to a young writer
who excused himself for some literary laxity by saying that “Sir Walter
did the same.” “We should take off our hats whenever that great and good
man’s name is mentioned in our presence.”
OPINIONS.
It has been occasionally remarked by people who are not wholly in
sympathy with the methods and devices of our time that this is an age of
keen intellectual curiosity. We have scant leisure and scant liking for
hard study, and we no longer recognize the admirable qualities of a wise
and contented ignorance. Accordingly, there has been invented for us in
late years, a _via media_, a something which is neither light nor
darkness, a short cut to that goal which we used to be assured had no
royal road for languid feet to follow. The apparent object of the new
system is to enable us to live like gentlemen, or like gentlewomen, on
other people’s ideas; to spare us the labor and exhaustion incidental to
forming opinions of our own by giving us the free use of other people’s
opinions. There is a charming simplicity in the scheme, involving as it
does no effort of thought or mental adjustment, which cannot fail to
heartily recommend it to the general public, while the additional merit
of cheapness endears it to its thrifty upholders. We are all accustomed
to talk vaguely about “questions of burning interest,” and “the
absorbing problems of the day.” Some of us even go so far as to have a
tolerably clear notion of what these questions and problems are. It is
but natural, then, that we should take a lively pleasure, not in the
topics themselves, about which we care very little, but in the
persuasions and convictions of our neighbors, about which we have
learned to care a great deal. Discussions rage on every side of us, and
the easy, offhand, cocksure verdicts which are so frankly confided to
the world have become a recognized source of popular education and
enlightenment.
I have sometimes thought that this feverish exchange of opinions
received a fatal impetus from that curious epidemic rife in England a
few years ago, and known as the “Lists of a Hundred Books.” Never before
had such an admirable opportunity been offered to people to put on what
are commonly called “frills,” and it must be confessed they made the
most of it. The Koran, the Analects of Confucius, Spinoza, Herodotus,
Demosthenes, Xenophon, Lewis’s History of Philosophy, the Saga of Burnt
Njal, Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding,--such, and such only, were
the works unflinchingly urged upon us by men whom we had considered,
perhaps, as human as ourselves, whom we might almost have suspected of
solacing their lighter moments with an occasional study of Rider Haggard
or Gaboriau. If readers could be made by the simple process of deluging
the world with good counsel, these arbitrary lists would have marked a
new intellectual era. As it was, they merely excited a lively but
unfruitful curiosity. “Living movements,” Cardinal Newman reminds us,
“do not come of committees.” I knew, indeed, one impetuous student who
rashly purchased the Grammar of Assent because she saw it in a list; but
there was a limit even to her ardor, for eighteen months afterwards the
leaves were still uncut. It is a striking proof of Mr. Arnold’s inspired
rationality that, while so many of his countrymen were instructing us in
this peremptory fashion, he alone, who might have spoken with authority,
declined to add his name and list to the rest. It was an amusing game,
he said, but he felt no disposition to play it.