Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the
facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much
if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for
the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in
mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade of
society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his valet,
like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects the
graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, die assumption of the
tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked upon as
one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar people have
a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn't they have a villa
at Twickenham--why not a box at the opera--a white bait dinner at
Blackwall--a yacht at Southampton Î They have the money to indulge their
caprice, and it is no one's affair but their own. They make themselves
ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience counterbalances
the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which side lies the
profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be squandered, and
the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there is something that
demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we have only to look to
France to see, that when once you abolish an hereditary _noblesse_, your
banker is then your great man.
We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretension of the wealthy
alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the credit
of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a new
region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do with
such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it as he
will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no compassion
for him, who; while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway and
dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will often be
offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief presented by
its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and stratagem by
which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an amusing person;
but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is derived from the
fact; that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to deceive us, we are
still more so, for we have found him out.
Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter 'Change,
who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must stretch
their paws into that if their neighbour, so every man now-a-days wishes
to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all his tastes, habits,
and associations, and where once having attained to, his life is one
of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of simulating manners he is not
used to, is not more subversive of his self-respect, than his imitation
is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.
Curran said that a corporation was, a “thing that had neither a body to
be kicked, nor a soul to be damned.” And, verity, I begin to think that
masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A nation is a
great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of rank, wealth,
and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and France, Germany
and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up to them in the
political world, as in society we do to those whose rank and station are
the guarantees of their power. Many other countries of Europe have also
their claims upon us, but still smaller in degree. Italy, with all its
association of classical elegance--Spain, whose history shines with the
solemn splendour of an illuminated missal, where gold and purple are
seen blending their hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we
say of those newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom
families, give themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour
by a strange mockery of institutions and customs of their greater
neighbours, to appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look,
for instance, to Belgium the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of politics,
which, having retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for
a gentleman on its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its
attempts at high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for
strange enough the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to
a nation, and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon
her mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their rich
neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to establish
a corps of diplomacy.
Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a
tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but whatever
his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary of a
great household he can never attain to--he can never have a groom of the
chambers. This, like the “chasseur” abroad, is the appendage of but one
class, by constant association with whom its habits are acquired,
its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see the tall
Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind the caleche
of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous minion of
Devonshire House announce the uncouth, un-syllabled names, that come
east of St. Dunstan's.
So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court,
a senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with
diplomacy--the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your
diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he
be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many
types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand,
Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too long
given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error concerning
it; however, your little folk will not be denied the pleasures of their
great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy, and they will be
laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a country in Europe,
there is not a state however small, there is not a Coburgism with three
thousand inhabitants and three companies of soldiers, where _they_
haven't a minister resident with plenipotentiary powers extending to
every relation political and commercial, although all the while the
Yankees would be sorely puzzled to point out on the map the _locale_ of
their illustrious ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason
for their embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of
diplomacy is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American
knows no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his
own counsel and theirs also.
Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye,
on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting
their masters--some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of
reflected importance my lord's gentleman so justly wears; others, in
graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and observant
demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household. While a third
class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their livery with an air of
awkwardness and constraint, blushing at themselves even a deeper
colour than the scarlet of their breeches. They feel themselves in
masquerade--they were at the plough but yesterday, though they are
in powder now. With the innate consciousness of their absurdity, they
become fid-getty and uneasy, and would give the world for “a row” to
conceal the defaults of their breeding. Just so, your petty “diplomate”
suffers agony in all the quiet intercourse of life. The limited
opportunities of small states have circumscribed his information. He
is not a man of the world, nor is he a political character, for he
represents nothing; nothing, therefore, can save him from oblivion or
contempt, save some political convulsion where any meddler may become
prominent; he has thus a bonus on disturbance: so long as the company
behave discreetly, he must stay in his corner, but the moment they
smash the lamps and shy the decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and
becomes as great as his neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the
peace and quietness of Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such
persons from the councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of everyday
life does upon the breeding and good manners of our associates.
And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this
absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay a
_Charge d'affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in his
button-hole.
The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one
were but disposed to relate them.
Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician
who obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a
gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search
of his master; so quick were the fellow's movements, so rapid his
transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed
that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls; and
thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly sought
after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The Emperor of
the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by the hint, for
while other nations are wasting their thousands in maintaining a whole
corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the doctor to have only one
footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe without ceasing: thus _The
Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier de L------, the Brazilian
ambassador, has arrived in London to resume his diplomatic functions;
_The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his departure from the Dutch
Court; _The Algeimeine Zeitung_ announces the prospect of his arrival
at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has a beautiful article on the
prosperity of their relations with Mexico, under the auspices of the
indefatigable Chevalier: “_non regio terræ_,” exempt from his labours.
Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has managed to be not only in two, but twenty
places at once, and I should not be in the least surprised to hear of
his negotiations for sulphur at Naples, at the same moment that he was
pelting snowballs in Norway. Whether he travels in a balloon or on
the back of a pelican, he is a wonderful man, and a treasure to his
government.
The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his
functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it looks
diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.
Truly, Chevalier de L------, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
but a type of thee.