The Observations of Professor Maturin
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The Observations of
Professor Maturin
By
Clyde Furst
[Illustration]
New York
Columbia University Press
1916
_All rights reserved_
_Copyright, 1916, by Columbia University Press_
_Printed March, 1916_
_Reprinted, by permission, from
The New York Evening Post_
_D. B. Updike · The Merrymount Press · Boston_
Dedicated to
Professor Maturin’s
Oldest and Best Friend
R. E. M.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. _The Staff of Life_ 3
II. _The Sindbad Society_ 17
III. _Foreign Travel at Home_ 25
IV. _Country Life_ 35
V. _Food for Thought_ 44
VI. _Beside the Sea_ 54
VII. _Christmas_ 65
VIII. _The Sovran Herb_ 75
IX. _Men’s Faces_ 85
X. _Mental Hygiene_ 94
XI. _The Mystery of Dress_ 109
XII. _Questions at Issue_ 117
XIII. _The Fountain of Youth_ 122
XIV. _The Contemporary Fiction Company_ 130
XV. _The Old Doctor_ 137
XVI. _Breakfasting with Portia_ 147
XVII. _Summer Science_ 157
XVIII. _Measuring the Mind_ 168
XIX. _The Club of the Bachelor Maids_ 183
XX. _A Small College_ 192
XXI. _Old Town Revisited_ 202
XXII. _The County Fair_ 215
Introduction
It was never my good fortune actually to meet Professor Maturin,
or even to see him, although in the latter case I should instantly
have recognized him, so familiar have I been through my mind’s eye,
at least, with his personal appearance--his slender figure somewhat
stooping with the bodily inclination of the scholar, the clear-cut
features that could only have fitted his clear-cut mind, and the
thoughtful eyes that were their necessary concomitant. I had known, of
course, of his predilection for the Athenaeum, and his habit of dining
at that club of intellectual and gastronomic repute, and I was aware
of his membership in the veracious Sindbad Society whose meetings he
frequently attended; but here, too, and principally from the fact, no
doubt, that I was a member of neither, I had never been able to bring
about the much desired personal acquaintance with him.
Of acquaintance, however, and even of a fairly satisfactory sort, there
has nevertheless been no lack, for I have read much that Professor
Maturin has written, and I have remembered, although inadequately
enough, many of the things that he has said with such understanding
and insight of the real bearing of individual experience, along quite
extraordinarily extended lines, upon the wide problems of human
existence.
It is so much the more a pleasure, accordingly, to me, and as it
will be to all those who have read Professor Maturin before only
sporadically and at intervals, at length to have the opportunity
to read him consecutively, and thus to get those side-lights and
reflections of understanding that can only come with a reasonable
contiguity of statement.
In the present book, moreover, we shall be able to read the sayings of
this philosopher of the cheerful mind as they have been remembered and
recorded by one who, better than any one else at all, knew Professor
Maturin as he thought, and as he spoke, and as he had his being. It
is a record, as it will be very easy to discover, of one who has
thought much and thought well, for there is a great difference, as
we all know, in the quality as well as in the quantity of thinking.
In it all there is an intellectual optimism that inevitably follows
the thought wherever it roams--and it often roams far afield--which
is one of the thrice blessed things of life. If through it all there
runs, as again may clearly be seen, the visible thread of the conscious
pursuit of happiness, Professor Maturin is no mere eudemonist whose
belly is his god and whose goal is pleasure, but rather one who sees
in the attainment of personal happiness the rightful accessory of a
rounded and rational living. And with it all, and notwithstanding
his calling, and in spite of the fact that he himself must have been
conscious of an unusual knowledge which leads him at times even into
the imperilled field of epigram, it is all done, not with a pedantic
air of professorial sophistication, but with genuine human sympathy.
And in this spirit he is commended to that wider circle of readers who
are now to be able to know him.
WILLIAM H. CARPENTER
_Columbia University
February 14, 1916_
The Observations of Professor Maturin
I
_The Staff of Life_
My friend Professor Bedelar Maturin exercises the right of a bachelor
and a man of fifty to a considerable number of eccentricities. All
of these are harmless, since he is by nature a gentleman; and, his
habit being that of a scholar, some of them are of more than ordinary
interest. I very well remember my first learning of that one I am about
to describe. My family having left town for the summer, I found him
dining at the Athenaeum, as I knew him frequently to do for the sake of
detachment from the bachelor ménage he maintains--as much for his books
as for himself--in a house near the river, not far from the university.
He beckoned me to take my already ordered dinner at the particular
corner table for which his preference is always respected by his
fellow Athenians, and, after a smile of greeting, he passed over
to me the book he had been reading--“The Physiology of Taste,” by
Brillat-Savarin--with the quiet comment, “The standard and gauge of
modern civilization.”
I had never before seen the work of that high-priest of gastronomy,
but before examining it I looked my surprise at the apparent enthusiasm
of the scholar whose abstemious habits were well known to his friends,
and whose slender figure, thoughtful eyes, and clear-cut features made
it impossible to associate him with the pleasures of the table. For
reply he merely indicated several of the “Fundamental Truths of the
Science,” on the open page before me:
“But for life the universe were nothing; and all that has life requires
nourishment.”
“The fate of nations depends upon how they are fed.”
“The man of sense and culture alone understands eating.”
I was familiar with Dean Swift’s tracing the origin of certain essays
to the consumption of particular varieties of cheese, and I had read
Maturin’s own whimsical paragraphs explaining the peculiarities of
certain national literatures by the characteristics of their national
beverages, and paralleling the growth of humanitarianism with the
increasing use of tobacco, of which he is sparing; but he seemed now to
be serious, so that I merely asked what he made of such a statement as
the following, which I read from his author: “The discovery of a new
dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery
of a planet.”
Explaining that he would have the author convince me, rather than
himself, he indicated yet another paragraph: “What praise can be
refused the science which sustains us from the cradle to the grave,
which entrances the delights of love and the pleasures of friendship,
which disarms hatred, makes business easier, and affords us, during the
short voyage of our lives, the only enjoyments that both relieve us
from fatigue and themselves entail none!”
“Take it, and read it,” he said, as I looked up. “I know it by heart.”
I gladly accepted the volume, for there was here evidently more than
appeared; but I also expressed the wish that he would, himself, first
tell me more about it; and this, retaking the book, his own dinner
being now finished and mine but about to begin, he proceeded to do.
“I should not need to remind you,” he began, “that I am no friend
to indulgence, much less to so gross a form as over-feeding, nor to
speak of my known antagonism to every form of ignorance--except to
explain that it is for these reasons that I have become an earnest
advocate of gastronomy, which endeavors to transform eating from
the ignorant indulgence it usually is to a reasonable science of
nutrition and a refined art of enjoyment. Whatever popular disesteem
the science and the art still suffer is due either to ignorance of its
serious endeavor, or to a Puritanic attitude that is both inconsistent
and irreverent. The fabric of nature is so constituted that all of
our essential processes are accompanied by pleasure; a thoroughly
consistent ascetic would necessarily cease to exist.
“Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, although of course not the founder of
gastronomy, is its most admirable modern champion. He lived from the
first half of the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the
nineteenth, first as mayor of his native town of Belley in France;
then, during the Revolution, an exile in Switzerland and in America;
and, finally, during the last third of his life, a judge in Paris of
the highest national court. The fame of his professional wisdom and
justice was great, but that of his personal benevolence and geniality
was far greater. The choicest flavor and charm of many years of social
life he preserved in the book he apparently intended to leave, at his
death, as a legacy of good cheer to his friends. The record of his love
of good living was to serve him, a bachelor, as a posterity.
“His fears that so genial a production might seem inconsistent with
his judicial dignity were overcome by arguments which are given in a
prefatory dialogue, and the volume was published anonymously in 1825,
a year before his death. Even in so short a time the book was crowned
with extraordinary popularity. Although one would hesitate, perhaps, to
call it ‘adorable,’ as Balzac did, it is certainly one of those rarely
spontaneous and charming outpourings of personality that belong apart
with White’s ‘Selborne’ and Walton’s ‘Angler.’
“In addition to the Prefatory Dialogue and the Fundamental Truths,
already mentioned, the little volume includes a Preface, thirty
‘Meditations,’ or chapters, and, in conclusion, a dozen narrative and
descriptive ‘Varieties’ bearing upon the subject. The whole amounts to
less than three hundred small pages.
“The earlier chapters on the senses of taste, appetite, and thirst
are largely physiological or psychological, but even here the author
carries out with charm his intention of touching but lightly subjects
likely to be dull. Throughout he practices the preaching of the mad
poet Blake,--‘To particularize is the great distinction of merit,’--and
everywhere he introduces original anecdotes, witticisms, and similar
side-dishes. Although Savarin separates the functions of taste into
direct, complete, and reflective, he finds himself unable to classify
its results further than to suggest some such gradation as,--positive,
beef; comparative, veal; superlative, pheasant. For its greatest
satisfaction one should eat slowly and in minute portions--all that
is valuable of ‘Fletcherism’ in a sentence. Anything else would be
unworthy of our perfected organism, ‘the structure of the tongue of
all animals being analogous to the reach of their intelligence.’
Under ‘Thirst’ there is a similar, but even more daringly imaginative
observation: ‘The desire for fermented liquors and curiosity about
a future state are the two distinctive attributes of man as the
masterpiece of nature.’
“Perhaps the most valuable, certainly the most pleasing, of the
chapters are those on ‘Gastronomy,’ ‘The Love of Good Living,’ ‘People
Fond of Good Living,’ ‘Gastronomic Tests,’ and ‘The Pleasures of the
Table.’
“Gastronomy is defined as ‘the scientific knowledge of all that relates
to man as an eater;’ being founded upon natural history, physics,
chemistry, economics, and cookery, as well as on the sciences already
touched upon; and affecting physically, mentally, and morally, every
individual, of every class of society, every moment of his life. Some
knowledge of it is therefore indispensable to all, and the more as one
ascends the social scale; it being well known that the most momentous
decisions of personal and of national life are made at table.
“‘The Love of Good Living’ is shown to be not merely a physical, but
an intellectual and a moral quality as well, ‘almost deserving to rank
as a virtue;’ opposing excess, developing discrimination, promoting
physical health, and aiding moral resignation to the laws of nature. In
addition, it is an easily and constantly available source of natural
and innocent pleasure in a world of pain.
“People fond of good living, especially physicians, men of letters,
churchmen, and people of sense and culture in general,--others being
incapable of the necessary appreciation and judgment,--always live
longer than ordinary men. Napoleon’s worst defeats were due to his
injudicious diet. The wise in regard to food may usually be known by
their mere appearance, but for cases of doubt Brillat-Savarin suggests
a series of ‘Gastronomic Tests,’ or dishes, of such indisputable
excellence that those who do not instantly respond may immediately be
declared unworthy. Thus: For a small income, filet of veal larded with
bacon, or sauerkraut bristling with sausages; for a moderate income,
filet of beef with gravy, or boiled turbot; for a generous income,
truffled turkey, or stuffed pike with cream of prawns. It is important
in these tests that generous portions be provided, for quantity as well
as quality has its effect.
“The conclusion of the meditation ‘On the Pleasures of the Table’ must
be quoted entire, so worthy is it of a place in ‘The Golden Book of
Hospitality:’ ‘Let the number of guests be small, that the conversation
may be constantly general; of various occupations, but analogous
tastes; the men of wit without pretension, the women pleasant, but not
coquettish. Let the dishes be few but choice, and the wines of the
first quality; the order from the more substantial to the lighter, the
simpler to the finer flavors. Let the meal proceed without hurry or
bustle; the coffee be hot, the liqueurs chosen with care. Let the room
to which the guests retire be large enough for cards, for those who
cannot do without them, while leaving ample scope for conversation;
the guests animated with the hope of still further pleasure. Then let
the tea be not too strong, the toast artistically buttered, the punch
skilfully made. Finally, let nobody leave before eleven, and everybody
be in bed by twelve.’
“After reaching such an elevation, Brillat-Savarin wisely follows
the dramatic principle of relief, by introducing anecdotes of the
halts of a hunting party, and chapters on digestion, rest, sleep, and
dreams. His observations and illustrations are always interesting and
picturesque, frequently very suggestive, and sometimes strikingly
modern--as when he says, ‘Digestion, of all the bodily functions, has
most influence on the morale of the individual;’ when he recommends for
sleeping an airy room, no bed curtains, and light but warm coverings;
or when he discusses foods that produce sleep, and those that induce
pleasant dreams.
“The theme of the meditation ‘On Corpulence’--‘The great majority of us
eat and drink too much’--is of such general and permanent applicability
that it is rediscovered every decade and announced with trumpets.
The chapter ‘On the Prevention or Cure of Corpulence’ outlines the
diet by means of which for thirty years the author kept that tendency
in himself ‘to the limit of the imposing’--a statement that his
portrait well bears out. After a counter meditation on leanness,
some felicitations over the decline of fasting, and an excursus on
‘Exhaustion and Death’--‘Death itself being not unaccompanied by
pleasure when it is natural’--the author is again ready for a higher
flight.
“This occurs in the longest chapters of the book, in the form of ‘A
Philosophical History of Cookery, Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern,’ with
an appendix, ‘On Parisian Dining-Houses.’ Here, indeed, is richness:
the advantages and disadvantages of eating raw meat; the primitive
feasting in the ‘Iliad;’ the advent of boiling in the Old Testament;
how Cadmus brought the alphabet and good cooking to Greece; the
elaborate and sometimes strange taste of the Romans,--as for dormice
and assafoetida,--and a survey of the ancient literature of the
subject, from the fragmentary poem on gastronomy by Archestratus, to
the convivial poetry of Horace and Tibullus. The whole story is told,
although briefly, excepting only the peculiar taste of the Greeks for
mingling sea-water and turpentine with their wines.
“The mediaeval and modern development of the art is sketched, although
of necessity more rapidly, from the rescue of cookery from barbarism
by Charlemagne; through the introduction of spices from the East,
garlic from Palestine, parsley from Italy, coffee from Turkey, and
the potato from America; to the ages of pastry and of sugar, and the
final culmination of the art in political gastronomy. Every line of
this section contains such good things as ‘coffee should be crushed,
not ground;’ and, ‘It was Talleyrand who first brought from Italy the
custom of taking Parmesan cheese with soup.’ But to select would be to
quote the whole.
“Restaurants--unhappily Savarin could not know the modern derivation
from _res_ and _taurus_--appear to have been invented in Paris in 1770.
There is a fascinating picture of the best of the author’s time, with
three hundred dishes and a hundred wines; a height of eloquence over
the cosmopolitan sources of a good dinner; and yet higher soaring over
the Parisian missionaries of the doctrine throughout the civilized
world.
“Nor does inspiration wane in the chapter on ‘Gastronomic Principles
Put into Practice’--‘the treasures of nature were not created to be
trodden under foot ... a good dinner is but little dearer than a bad
one ... a man may show himself a distinguished connoisseur without
going beyond the limits of his actual needs.’
“The last chapter, ‘Gastronomic Mythology,’ is pure creation--of
Gasterea, the tenth muse, her nature, habit, aspect, and worship; and
then--for like Donne, ‘when he is done, he is not done, for there is
more’--comes a ‘Transition:’ ‘In writing I had a double object ...
to lay down the fundamental theory of gastronomy, so that she would
take her place among the sciences in that rank to which she has an
incontestable right. The second, to define with precision what must be
understood by the love of good living, so that for all time that social
quality may be kept apart from gluttony and intemperance, with which
many have absurdly confounded it.’
“Finally follow the generous dozen of short ‘varieties’--anecdotes
like ‘The Curé’s Omelette;’ personal experiences of ‘The Gastronome
Abroad,’ some in America; original recipes and original verse; and an
‘Historical Elegy,’ in pity for the gastronomic ignorance of the past,
and in prophetic vision of the full gastronomic glories of the year
nineteen hundred.
“But, alas,” said Professor Maturin, slowly closing the book, “I cannot
wish that he were here. The world is not yet ready for his message;
he should have added another hundred years. It was fifty years before
his work was well enough known outside of France to be translated;
and even to-day, in spite of all its delightful qualities, not one in
a hundred, even among reading men, know it. And yet, there has never
been anything quite like it. Such a rare combination of race, time, and
personality; of experience, cultivation, and taste, seldom occurs more
than once. But no other is necessary; nothing can be better than the
best, and Savarin has handled his theme with unapproachable wisdom and
charm, once for all.
“The science has, of course, progressed immensely since his day. You
may fill your shelves with portentous tomes on food and dietetics,
and with experimental pamphlets from the Department of Agriculture.
Educators have introduced instruction concerning food into the
curriculum of the modern school. And I understand that there are
magazines of practical cookery for such ladies as look to the affairs
of their households. But as for Brillat-Savarin’s hope that the science
and the art of gastronomy, as he elaborated it, would soon become a
part of the faith and practice, the delight as well as the duty, of all
cultivated people,--that is yet far from fulfilment.
“But, my good friend,” and here Professor Maturin rose, shaking his
long forefinger, “the truth will undoubtedly prevail, ‘though long
deferred, though long deferred,’ as Lanier says. Take the book, and
keep it--I make a practice of distributing copies--read it; you
cannot help doing so at a single sitting; talk about it; become, like
me, a propagandist, and the blessing of Gasterea will go with you.
Good-night.” And he was gone.
My friend Professor Maturin spoke the very truth. I finished the book
before I left my seat, and then and there became a fellow equestrian
to Banbury Cross. Deliberately and with prepensive aforethought, I
invite the reader to do the same, and thereby to gain not only personal
pleasure and profit, but, in addition, the greater satisfaction of
contributing a lasting good to others.
II
_The Sindbad Society_
The writer recently enjoyed the great privilege of being the guest of
his friend, Professor Maturin, at a meeting of the Sindbad Society, an
organization for the enjoyment of informal discussion concerning the
theory and practice, the graces and the usefulness, of foreign travel.
Similar in purpose to the Travellers’ Club of London, but lacking
anything like the equipment of that body’s sumptuous Pall Mall home,
the Sindbad Society endeavors to fulfil its function by means of
occasional dinners in the private rooms of other clubs. Indeed, I was
given to understand that the members were unanimous in considering
a local habitation, or immovable property of any sort, to be most
inappropriate for a club the very essence of which was peregrination.
My neighbor at the large round dinner table averred that to own even a
portrait of Sindbad the Sailor, the mythical founder and patron of the
club, would be to embody in a concrete object sentiments of value only
so long as they animated the mind.
As we took our places at table, it became evident, in spite of the
recreative character of the club, that here was no body of amateurs, to
whom travel meant merely London and Paris, the Rhine and the Riviera.
I recognized a former director of the American School in Rome, an
artist and a craftsman who had just returned from Japan and India, an
importer of things Persian, and a biologist who spent half his time in
the South Seas. Professor Maturin described the other members to me as
an engineer who had developed oil wells in China, an archaeologist who
directed excavations in Syria, former secretaries of legation at St.
Petersburg and at Constantinople, an army officer from Manila, and an
explorer who had climbed everything but the mountains of the moon.
The dinner, although entirely without pose, was intentionally and
interestingly exotic. Russian preserved cucumbers and a soup of
chestnuts from the south of France were followed by an entrée of lamb,
prepared according to a Constantinople recipe, and by boned capon. The
colonel mixed a Filipino salad-dressing, and with it the archaeologist
supplied cigarettes made of coffee leaves. Finally, the engineer
introduced a South American dessert of ripe red bananas, guava jelly,
and sharp cheese, and with this was served Carlsbad burnt-fig coffee.
The wines, although poured sparingly, were as interesting as the food.
The cigars were Cuban vegueras. The endeavor, which was surely realized
throughout, had evidently been to seek the unusual, not for the sake
of mere strangeness, but for an excellence unattainable through the
ordinary.
The same might be said of the talk which accompanied the meal. It
was anything but conscious or formal, and yet I noticed that leading
questions were not only allowed but expected, and that it was the
custom of the entire company to listen when any conversation became
generally interesting. In this way I enjoyed a whole series of
descriptions of forests and mountains, rivers and deserts, of barbarous
and unfrequented countries, of harbors and fortifications, cities and
courts, cathedrals and colleges, libraries and museums; with anecdotes
of experience and adventure, of state and society, of beautiful women
and distinguished men.
The near distance of Europe was by no means forgotten, but it was
discussed in a way that made me feel that I must, in Bacon’s phrase,
have gone there “hooded,” or, at least, as the mythical American who
checked off each city in his Baedeker after a hurried glance about
him from the top of some tall building. In particular, I was possessed
with successive desires to make good my deficiencies by going at once
to live at a wonderful small hotel across the river in Paris, visiting
a certain sculptor’s studio in Madrid, dreaming on the terraces of Lake
Maggiore, and hearing the opera by telephone at Budapest. When the talk
ranged more widely, as it did for the most part, I longed to observe
a volcano and experience an earthquake in action, and determined to
journey without delay to Damascus for the sake of its baths and cafés,
“the most exquisitely luxurious in the world;” that is, if I did not
decide, instead, for Shepherd’s hotel at Cairo, or, perhaps, the vale
of Thingvalla in Iceland.
With the cigars, the conversation shifted from details of observation
and experience, by way of penetrative comment on men and manners,
until it reached what seemed, at least to me, profound conclusions
concerning national and social characteristics. The classical scholar,
with a majority of the other members, opposed the craftsman and the
engineer, in ascribing a certain monotony and shallowness to Japanese
life, in spite of its old aestheticism and its new efficiency. Both of
the diplomats endorsed the Persian specialist’s statement that “the
hope of the East is in Western inoculation; it will never regenerate
itself.” “Nor be regenerated,” growled the colonel. “From my point of
view,” replied the artist, “it has no need to. Nature is the absolute
artist, and nowhere else do people live so close to her. Rare natural
beauty, a constant sun, and a mellow atmosphere give existence there
such an intensity and richness that mere living becomes an art--‘pure
pomegranate, not banana,’ as they say in Egypt.” “It takes the eyes
of love to see angels,” concluded the archaeologist. “Natural savages
may be noble, but effete races are not, and such most of the Eastern
peoples seem to me. However, I may be wrong, or at least narrow;
toleration is the great lesson of travel.”
After a number of such discussions, which were listened to by all, the
company returned by general consent to more specific topics--plans,
principally, for future journeys. These had but a melancholy interest
for me, who had not the remotest hope of realizing any of them, until
the conversation became once more general in outlining an ideal rapid
journey around the world. This whirled me past Honolulu palm trees and
craters, amid Japanese cherry-blossoms and wistaria, along the Great
Wall of China, through Canton gardens and bazaars, into Calcutta
palaces and Delhi temples, by dahabeah in Egypt and camel in Syria,
until I caught my breath once more in the midst of the Mediterranean.
But the most valuable part of the evening, and to me the most
enjoyable, if satisfaction is to be measured by what one remembers
longest, was the concluding half-hour, when every member of the group,
quite unconsciously I am sure, fell to felicitating every other member
on the success of the evening, the value of travel, and the pleasure
and profit of thus discussing it.
I had, myself, experienced vicariously some of the delights of filling
in the blank spaces on the map of the world with picturesque scenes
and animated figures. I had noted with interest how the habit of
observation seemed to lead inevitably to comparison, and that to
generalization and conclusion. It had been no small satisfaction to
learn how adequately the human frame and mind had met and withstood
the severer experiences of the more daring--how small, after all, were
the world’s greatest difficulties and dangers to the unconquerable
spirit. But it was most gratifying of all to realize that the general
experience had resulted not in distrust, but in belief in the
fundamental kindliness, if not goodness, of general human nature; and
in a firm conviction that the world as a whole was visibly advancing in
material, mental, and moral well-being.
I had, naturally, never questioned the charm of travel as a recreation,
but this evening gave me a new sense of its superior value as
experience and education. I knew, of course, that travel required
no ordinary equipment of perception, knowledge, and judgment--of
sensitiveness to impressions, with material to compare and ability to
value; that indifferent travel would serve only, as Rousseau said of
indifferent reading, “to make presumptuous ignoramuses.” But, although
I had long believed that the observant and thoughtful home-keeping man
might attain an understanding of himself and even of his nation, I came
now to doubt that there was any means other than foreign travel for
developing a realization of what is really fundamental to the general
human spirit.
In voicing to Professor Maturin my gratitude for the pleasure and
profit of the evening, I found that he had observed me growing a trifle
stale, and had designedly administered this meeting as a remedy. He
expressed his opinion that I was already out of danger, judging from
my evident appreciation, with Shakespeare, that “a good traveller
is something at the latter end of a dinner.” And he beamed on me as
mellowly as the moon when, at parting, I expressed my intention of
continuing the medicine, homoeopathically, through books of travel,
until my wonted tone was entirely restored. The whole prescription
worked such wonders as a tonic that I strongly recommend it to others.
III
_Foreign Travel at Home_
“I thank you,” said Professor Maturin, laying aside the manuscript
he had been reading me, in order to test its appeal,--“I thank you.
I am only afraid that you are too generous. But, in any case, I am
very grateful, and I hope that you will allow me to be at your service
during the remainder of the evening. Do I not see you looking somewhat
dispirited again? Are you not neglecting your mental hygiene?” and,
leaning forward from his circle of lamplight, he peered at me anxiously.
I replied with one affirmative for both queries, but pleaded misfortune
rather than fault. I knew that I was in serious need of variety, but
I had found that the specific he had recommended--the atmosphere of
foreign travel--no longer satisfied the demand. On the contrary, it
aggravated my distemper, by adding to an already overpowering sense
of monotony an impossible desire to fly to the uttermost parts of the
earth. Books of travel and my friends’ discussions of their coming
journeys merely increased my distress.
“So-o?” said Professor Maturin. “So-o-o?” leaning back in his huge
leather chair, and putting his finger and thumb tips together. “Well,
I suspected as much, and I fear that I am at least partly to blame for
your condition. I prescribed a remedy that you have come to find worse
than the disease, and, apparently, you have come at the same time to a
new realization of Stevenson’s saying that ‘books are all very well in
their way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life’--not
that I would be disrespectful to my best friends,” and he smiled at the
well-filled shelves which extend around his admirable library.
“You will not think me unsympathetic when I say that I have been
waiting for this symptom,” he continued. “It is an important part of
your cure. Some day I will explain to you my entire system of mental
hygiene, but there is not time for that to-night, nor are you quite
ready for it until you act upon my next and final recommendation.
“You will remember that Emerson said, ‘Our first journeys discover to
us the indifference of places. The truest visions, the best spectacles
I have seen, I might have had at home.’ He did not himself practice his
preachment, but that does not invalidate it. Kant, however, I believe,
never travelled more than forty miles from Königsberg; and Sainte-Beuve
for fifty years seldom left Paris. What, of course, one wants is not to
subject himself to the miscellaneous and often distracting impacts of
foreign travel, but to realize What essential elements he needs, where
to find, and how to apply them. As one of our poets has put it:
_Who journeys far may lack the seeing eye:
Stay, thou, and know what wonders round thee lie._
“At one time in my life I travelled continually. But now that I am
older and wiser, I know that I can find practically everything I want
here at home. At different times I want an almost infinite variety
of things, but they are all here in New York. This city is the true
cosmopolis: eighty nations are represented in its public schools;
four-fifths of the parents of its citizens came from the ends of the
earth; there are more than a million Germans; more than a million
Irish; more, and vastly more fortunate Hebrews than in all Palestine;
and so on--you know the figures.
“Now, I need not insist that what is most important in foreign travel
is not the novel sensations to which it gives rise,--the sense of a
different climate, the flavor of new dishes, the fragrance of strange
flowers, the sound of unfamiliar music, even the sight of ancient
buildings or famous pictures--pleasurable and profitable as all of
these are; and, fortunately, most of them may be enjoyed here, directly
or indirectly. The fundamental value of travel is in the realization
that it gives of ways of feeling, thinking, and acting, other than our
own; and these, along with many of their outward manifestations, our
new Americans bring with them.
“Thus, for example, if you are weary of the physical and mental traits
of a land where all things are yet new, you may find the inscrutable
calm of the immemorial East in Chinatown, where life flows as it did
before Confucius. The ceremonial prescribed by Moses is still carried
out here in many synagogues, and I can introduce you to more than one
turbaned swami who will talk like Buddha. Unfortunately, our best
illustration of the rigid solidity of the Egyptian spirit vanished when
the old Tombs prison was torn down, but there is still the obelisk in
the Park; and if you read Rossetti’s poem in the midst of the New York
Historical Society’s Assyrian marbles, you will surely feel yourself in
ancient Nineveh.
“If material crudities or social unrest distress you, you have but to
reopen your Aeschylus or your Cicero to recall the balanced strength
and fineness of Greece, the early law and order of Rome. Our nearest
approaches to Greek architecture are perhaps the porticoes of the
Sub-Treasury and the Columbia Library, or the choragic Soldiers and
Sailors Monument on Riverside Drive. But from time to time the local
Greeks revive their ancient games and enact their classic dramas--for
particulars, see their newspaper, _Atlantis_, if you read modern
Greek. As for Rome, High Bridge might fitly stand on the Campagna, or
Washington Arch by the Forum; and for both, the Metropolitan Museum is
full of casts of sculpture and of actual remains, from the Etruscan
chariot to whole walls from Pompeii.
“Would you reap anew the fruits of the Teutonic invasion, you need only
observe how it has brought force and endurance, solidity and creature
comfort, family affection and social sentiment, good humor and good
sense, to New York, as it did to Rome. The city would not be itself,
without its delicatessen shops or its Christmas trees; much less
without German scholarship or German music--Wagner and Beethoven having
become ours even more than Berlin’s.
“Or, if you prefer oil to butter,--that is, are Latin rather than
Teutonic in temper,--you may cultivate your mood by a morning with
the tower of Madison Square Garden, which is a copy of the Giralda at
Seville, and an afternoon in the new Hispanic Museum in Audubon Park.
For mediaeval Italy you need but read your Dante in the Church of the
Paulist Fathers. For the Renaissance, as for the Gothic, you may study
the architecture of any one of a score of our public buildings, or the
sculpture and painting in the Metropolitan Museum. Rome itself has now
no more Italian citizens than New York, and it hears far less Italian
music. While as for French music, French art, French cookery, and
French amenity--we have appropriated them as thoroughly as we have the
name Lafayette. Our rich men imitate French châteaux; the rest of us
bless or revile the French invention of the apartment house.
“Or, if you hold rather to the Anglo-Saxon temper: the English
satisfaction in the serious, the solid, the useful; the English habit
of accumulation, experiment, and certain conclusion; and the English
ideals of physical and mental health and exercise--these traits and
their tangible results are happily still so native to us that they can
in no sense be considered foreign.
“But even should your need or desire be for the mere sensations of
foreign travel, these also may be had in New York. You may taste
strange dishes and hear strange music in more foreign cafés in New
York than in any other city in the world. In the local shop of the
Bosnian-Herzegovinian tobacco monopoly you may smoke a water-pipe,
calling it hookah, chibouque, or nargileh, according to the place
in which you would like to be. You may eat real spaghetti and see
marionettes enact the story of Roland on Macdougal Street. You need
go no farther east than the East Side to buy Damascus inlaid metals,
or Chinese medallion ware, or Japanese flowered playing-cards. It
is possible, even, to become an importer in a small way, by buying
for five dollars, on Allen Street, Russian brasses that cost seven
dollars and fifty cents when transported to Twenty-second Street, or
ten dollars and seventy-five cents when they arrive on Fifth Avenue.
You may hear the service of the Greek Catholic Church, celebrated by
an archbishop, in a cathedral on Ninety-seventh Street. Bohemians,
Syrians, and even Egyptians have made whole sections of the city
practically their own, so far as manners and customs are concerned.
Nearly one hundred newspapers and periodicals are published in New
York in more than a score of foreign tongues. Perhaps you would care to
read a New York daily that is printed in Arabic?”
Rising, Professor Maturin drew from a drawer and held before me a copy
of _Kawkab Amerika_, a goodly-sized sheet, in strange characters, but
with a pictured heading eloquent to all. There I saw the desert, with
mosques to the right, and pyramids and Sphinx to the left. Between were
hosts of desert-dwellers, on foot, on horseback, on camel, but all
gazing and pointing to the central sky, where appeared a radiant vision
of our harbor statue of Liberty Enlightening the World.
“And it is no mirage to them,” said Professor Maturin, after a pause,
“and that is the best of it all to me. The strangeness of these
newcomers is, indeed, refreshing, but I like better to think of
them as most of them really are, or soon will be--the most genuine
of Americans. They are so through choice and, often, hard endeavor;
you and I, perhaps, only through accident. You know the fundamental
loyalty of the typical German-American. The Spanish press of the city
was staunchly American during our last war. The Turkish periodicals
applauded our demonstrations against the Porte; and Hungarians,
Servians, Syrians, and Persians have each formally organized for the
purpose of influencing their fatherlands to become more like the land
of their adoption.
“And so we come to the most valuable of all the ends of travel--the
greater realization and appreciation of home. We return from other
nations with relief--for there are few American emigrants--to a yet
new land of fertile soil and mineral wealth; to a people varied, yet
homogeneous, energetic, aggressive, ingenious, and self-reliant.
We face, it is true, problems such as the world has never known
before, but with unprecedented belief in idealism, morality, order,
and education; not apprehensive of danger, but quick in recognizing
and decisive in meeting it. Our successes in transportation, in
architecture, and in material well-being in general; our achievement
of the welfare of the whole people over that of section or class, of
equality of opportunity for each and of benevolence toward all, have
already taught the whole world new lessons of peace, tolerance, and
faith in the average man. Nor do I see any reason, as we become more
and more a new race, blended of many, why our good fortunes should not
continue and increase. Anything else would falsify our trust in a wide
and a wise humanity--and that is unthinkable.
“But, I beg your pardon,” said Professor Maturin, as I rose to say
good-night, “I did not mean to take the stump; and yet, I believe that
it is good sometimes to give utterance to these things which all of
us feel. Nothing revives the vigor of one’s spirit like the conscious
realization of being in harmony with fundamental law.”
IV
_Country Life_
I have never seen my friend Professor Maturin in better health or
spirits than he was when I met him the other evening at the Athenaeum.
He had just finished dinner, and indicated that he was in the mood for
talk by ordering two of the Cuban vegueras that he keeps in a private
box at the club, for use on special occasions.
“I am just back from the best vacation I have ever had,” he began.
“I have been spending a month with a friend up the river, at a most
delightful place, built and planted about fifty years ago by his
father, from memories of the villas about Florence, where he once
lived. The house has window balconies, a tower, a loggia opening west
and south, and a red-flagged terrace with a stone balustrade, all
complete. Below this slopes a wide lawn, then many flowering shrubs,
and finally splendid groupings of trees between and over which you may
see the river, here at its widest. The hills beyond and the highlands
to the north complete the picture.
“After breakfasting alone, at any time my fancy chose, according to
the happy custom of the house, I spent whole mornings on the terrace,
looking through the aisles of ancient oaks at the river, or at the
heaped-up summer clouds as they drifted south. I have heard the Hudson
called epic, because of its breadth and power. It is no less so in its
incidental embellishments of sunlight and shadow. I often watched it
from its morning silver, through all shades of reflected blue, until at
night it looked like a texture of royal purple into which the moonlight
and the stars were being woven. The clouds were better than any Alpine
mountains. Their mass and light and dark were as definite, and they
had other clouds about their peaks and oceans of vapor at their feet.
In addition they changed constantly, and turned to gold and opal at
evening.
“At luncheon, or shortly before, I met my host and hostess. If before,
we often strolled through a catalpa avenue to a semi-circular stone
seat overlooking the river, or along a pine walk to a lookout toward
the highlands, or past an orchard back of the house to a certain sunset
hill, for the widest view of all, where we could see the river for
twenty miles. Sometimes the hostess led us to sections which she called
‘nature’s gardens,’ because of the wild flowers, of which she was
particularly fond.
“About such flowers I knew so little that I would have been tempted
to revive my ancient botany had I not a good while ago learned the
necessity of limiting the number of one’s avocations and of resisting
the temptation to rob them of time, to spend on this new thing
and that. I felt the same way about the trees, which, I was told,
represented every indigenous variety. I knew by name only oak and
elm, beech and maple, and a few others; but I made the most of the
compensations of my ignorance, by noting, with all the freshness of
discovery, the characteristic angle or curve of the different boughs,
the varied form, texture, and characteristic movement of branch and
leaf, the innumerable greens of the foliage, and their infinite
modulations under light and shade.
“I am sure that we often know too much to get the full value of our
impressions. For a long time painters could not represent trees because
they remembered what each leaf was like; Claude painted his landscapes
from what he knew, rather than what he saw, Constable from what he
loved, Turner from what he imagined. It was not until the Barbizon men
lived in the forest that Rousseau caught the actual form and Corot the
fragrance of nature, and Monet could paint true light and air. It is
said that the most interesting writing is done by generally cultivated
people concerning subjects that are new to them. The greatest enjoyment
of nature often comes in the same way. It is quite possible to be
‘connoisseured out of one’s senses.’
“At our luncheons the talk was always delightful, for my friend’s ample
fortune gives him both occupation enough to keep him contemporary, and
leisure enough to allow him to be Coleridge’s ideal man of letters,
reaping only the choicest and most spontaneous growths of a richly
cultivated mind. After luncheon we usually sat awhile in the large,
although simple, conservatory, which adjoined the dining-room--if the
word ‘simple’ may properly be applied to a place where orange and
lemon trees attained their natural size, roses bloomed by the hundred,
and where we picked ripe pomegranates and figs for our dessert. This,
too, was due to the genius of the founder of the house, whose works my
friend delighted to honor and cherish.
“When we separated again I usually retired to my room for a book and a
nap, which lasted I know not how long, one of the charms of the place
being that artificial timepieces were absent, or, at least, invisible
and inaudible, everything, apparently, being regulated by the sun.
This source of light and heat usually led me in the late afternoon
to the loggia to watch the earliest anticipations of the evening
glow, and to listen to an orchestra of mocking-birds in an open-air
cage, accompanied by their wild neighbors, of whom there seemed to be
multitudes. English sparrows were ruthlessly banished, but every other
sort of bird was protected, with the reward of the almost familiar
companionship of orioles, cardinals, wrens, and humming-birds, and the
constant song of warbler, thrush, and meadow-lark. In nothing, I think,
is the country more delightfully different from the town than in its
sounds. Even the winds and the rains sound different there.
“My friend has so long lived his life with nature that it has become
the theme of his chief study. He outlined this to me one evening when
the rain caused us to transfer our coffee from the terrace to the
conservatory, where his ideas became permanently associated with the
impressions of azalea bloom and jasmine fragrance which I acquired at
the same time.
“‘I am slowly accumulating,’ he said, ‘facts and ideas for a history
of the relations between nature and man in the United States. The
conditions have been peculiar, and the results more than ordinarily
interesting. Nowhere else, for example, have people possessing all
the arts of civilization made their homes in the midst of absolutely
primitive nature. With such a beginning, three thousand years of
history have here been epitomized in three hundred. Nature as an enemy
was soon conquered, and nowhere else has she afterward shown herself
more friendly in surface fertility and underground resources. Our vast
and relatively undiversified territory has brought men of the coast,
the mountains, and the plains; of the rugged North and the languorous
South, into closer and more constant contact than ever before. And
to this unparalleled interplay we have welcomed myriads from every
other climate and condition on the earth, and have set up for the
whole theories of government which allow almost perfect freedom to all
racial, local, and individual traits.