would unhesitatingly banish them as the bane of the young and the
foolish. Snuff, also, we are done with, and happily, for it was the
most slovenly form of an indulgence which is unclean at its best.” Here
the Vicar flicked some imaginary ashes from his waistcoat. “We can
never be too grateful that our contemporary Sir Joshua Reynoldses are
not snuffy. But I must confess that a good Havana now and then”--and
the Vicar spoke slower and slower, until his sentence became an
eloquent silence as he drew upon his cigar, expelled the smoke, and
watched it fade away.
No one spoke for some moments, and as neither the Vicar nor Professor
Maturin seemed inclined to do so, I ventured a brief panegyric upon
pipes, preferably briars--their intimate, companionable, cumulative
qualities; the preference for them on the part of Spenser and Tennyson,
Locke and Fielding, Lamb and Lowell; and the varied range of their
offering as illustrated by Cowper’s Virginia, Thackeray’s Canaster,
and Aldrich’s Latakia.
“Nor may we forget Southey’s ‘Elegy on a Quid,’” added Professor
Maturin. “Seriously, however,” he continued, “smoke is beautiful
to the eye, pleasing in flavor and odor, smooth to the tactile and
comforting to the temperature sense, the occasion of a tranquil
muscular rhythm--the last not the least important. Thus it gratifies
six senses at once--no wonder its use has become universal, intimately
incorporated into national life east and west, south and north.”
“Alas, too intimately,” sighed the Vicar. “It costs half a billion a
year. It is another artificial habit that the world finds it difficult
if not impossible to do without. So few have Newton’s fear of adding to
the number of their necessities. Think how Thackeray missed his cigar
and how Prescott, when but one a day was allowed to him, ranged Paris
over for the very largest procurable! Did not Stevenson write, ‘Most
men eat occasionally, but what they really live on is tobacco’? Did
not Charles Lamb say he toiled after tobacco as other men toiled after
virtue? Was not his struggle to stop smoking as severe as De Quincey’s
with Opium?”
“I suspect,” replied Professor Maturin, “that both Lamb and De Quincey
made the literary most of their sufferings, and as for force of habit,
who can tell? I am sure that I never smoke merely from habit, but
always because of a conscious desire for the kind of satisfaction that
smoking gives.”
“Yes, yes,” sighed the Vicar, finishing his cigar, “but I am truly
distressed about the matter. I wish that your scientists would make a
comprehensive and conclusive investigation into the effects of tobacco,
as they have recently done into those of alcohol. Is it a stimulant
or a sedative? What is its effect on perception, comprehension,
association, combination, on general efficiency, on general health? Is
it a poison or a panacea?”
“It is certainly time that we knew surely,” replied Professor Maturin
gravely, “and it is our obligation to urge our scientific friends to
inform us. Until then, however, I must confess that my own experience
chiefly corroborates Carlyle’s judgment that ‘sedative, gently
clarifying tobacco smoke, with the obligation to a minimum of speech,
surely gives human intellect and insight the best chance they can
have.’ The general situation is well summed up by old Burton, when he
says: ‘Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far
beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, ...
but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers
do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands,
health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco.’ Have another cigar,
dominie.”
“Until we really know about tobacco,” concluded the Vicar, firmly
closing the box, “we, at least, will practice moderation.”
IX
_Men’s Faces_
“Come in, come in,” said Professor Maturin, as I was shown to the
door of his study. “I am very well, indeed, thank you--‘pursuing the
even terror of my way,’ as the proofreader said. I have just been
trying,” he continued, taking some papers from his writing-table,
“to triangulate Shakespeare’s nose according to Sir Francis Galton’s
plan for classifying profiles. But it appears that the shape of
Shakespeare’s nose is as uncertain as the spelling of his name. Here
in the Ely House portrait it is long and rounded, in the Droeshout
it is rather flattened, in the Zoust quite irregular, in the Trinity
Church monument a very vile nose indeed. You may observe, moreover,
among these plates, a similar disagreement concerning every one of
his features, although the general expression is like enough. All of
which was renewing in my mind, as you came in, certain observations
concerning men’s faces.
“If you were to go over with me my collection of literary portraits
here,--I have about two thousand,--you would note immense differences
in line and mass, light and shade, depth and delicacy. The prints
are from all sorts and conditions of statues, paintings, engravings,
and photographs; taken at all sorts of angles from profile to full
face, and at various elevations. The actual color and texture of the
originals, to say nothing of the artists’ ideas of them, would make the
variation much greater. And yet I believe you will agree that, in spite
of all detractions, almost every plate gives a surprisingly expressive
and individual characterization.”
Professor Maturin waited in silence while I looked over enough of
the portraits to convince myself of the justice of his observation.
Then he continued: “While possessed of that idea I amused myself by
picking out doubles. Here are some surprising similarities in the
faces of most dissimilar persons--Tolstoy and Verlaine, Bishop Heber
and Byron, Ronsard and Lincoln. All of these portraits of Spenser make
him look like Mephistopheles, and Seneca here is the exact counterpart
of our friend the sporting editor. In general, however, a resemblance
in appearance--like that, for example, between Shakespeare and
Calderon--represents a considerable correspondence in nature. Sometimes
this may be attributed to identity of race and nationality, as in the
cases of Renan and Sainte-Beuve, Taine and Zola. But most often the
resemblance shows true to temperament and character in spite of race,
time, and circumstance. Notice, for example, these prints of Horace and
Herrick, Bürger and Burns, Heine and Chopin, Maurice Jokai and George
W. Cable. Such resemblances hold even between very unusual faces, such
as those of Uhland and Goldsmith, and there are sometimes triplets like
Fouqué, Hoffmann and Poe. It appears, decidedly, that appearances are
_not_ deceptive.
“Personality cannot, of course, entirely transcend all rules: Dumas
père shows unequivocally his negroid blood; you can generalize
concerning the bent Russian head, the arched Spanish brows, the full
German nose, the common irregularity of English features. Accident
broke Thackeray’s nose, cost Camoens an eye, and at least threatened
De Foe’s ears. Distress left its mark on Cervantes and on Poe. Lamb
said, you remember, that Coleridge looked like an archangel, a little
damaged. Pope and De Quincey show their imperfect health. The posture
and the pose of occupation leave traces, like the knitted brows of
philosophers and men of action, the narrowed eyes of historians and
explorers, the open nostril of the naturalist, the worn mouth of the
orator. But these are minor matters--the general expression remains.
“The character of this general expression is perhaps most determined
by the size and shape of the head. These vary enormously--as one may
see in the Hutton collection of masks at Princeton--all the way from
the greatness of Thackeray’s to the smallness of Byron’s, from the
shortness and breadth of Luther’s to the narrowness and length of Lope
de Vega’s, from Darwin’s deep sloping dome to Scott’s ‘Peveril of the
Peak.’
“A single feature frequently dominates, like Sir Philip Sidney’s
‘imperial head with fair, large front,’ or Jean Paul Richter’s
strangely bulging forehead. The eye is often the most striking feature.
Scott said, literally, that the eyes of Burns glowed; the same thing
was said about Keats and Hawthorne. Scientists are notable for eager
eyes, mystics for dreamy ones. I have noticed that stylists, like
Flaubert, Catulle Mendès, d’Annunzio, John La Farge, and Charles
Eliot Norton, are heavy-lidded. Large noses connote power, if we may
judge from the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans; from Dante and
Savonarola, Wordsworth and Newman. We have the testimony of Lowell
that Emerson’s nose was so large that it cast a shadow. Socrates and
Plato, Herbert Spencer and Dr. Holmes, however, were but illy favored
in this respect. Satirists’ noses are long, and, as we might expect,
often pointed,--witness Erasmus, Swift, and Voltaire.
“Mouths are only less expressive than eyes. Sterne’s mouth shows him a
satyr, De Quincey’s marks him an imp. In general the mouths of authors,
and of clergymen, too often show self-importance or complacency. Julius
Caesar’s square jaw and Bismarck’s thick neck are also full of meaning,
although such features and the always significant poise of the head are
often obscured by the countless forms of ruff, band, stock, or collar
that men have affected from time to time.
“The hair and beard are even greater transformers. Personally, I like
somewhat wayward hair such as Scott’s, Hazlitt’s, and Tennyson’s. All
red-haired writers from Ben Jonson to Bulwer-Lytton attract me, while
I am repelled by Byron’s glossy and Shelley’s silky hair. Many heads
are improved by the thinning of their thatch, although Emerson’s was
not; some, like Irving’s, are enhanced by a wig. But in general wigs
are great levellers,--imagine Dr. Johnson in Addison’s! Alexander
Hamilton’s queue makes a fine balance for his profile, and a tonsure
is not always unbecoming. One may say the same for beards: Fitzgerald
always objected to Tennyson’s, but Bryant and Longfellow and Ruskin
were all bettered by theirs, the last immensely so. Freeman, however,
rather overdid it, and Flaubert’s walrus moustache was a monstrous
thing in such a stylist. Baudelaire’s beard and Swinburne’s are to me
much more shocking than anything in their verses. But the doctrine
of beards is really very subtle. Mr. Henry James’s removal of his
apparently reacted upon his style.
“After conspicuous single features, arrangement most influences
expression, and it is surprising to note how irregular this is.
Such correlation and symmetry as that of George Meredith is quite
exceptional. There are disagreements in color even between eyes--one
of Lamb’s was hazel, the other gray. The eyes and brows of Chatterton,
Balzac, and Douglas Jerrold are on a different plane, back of the rest
of their features. The right side of Thoreau’s face and of Whitman’s
is lower than the other, while the left side of Poe’s face is smaller.
Disproportion in mass is most frequent, the lower half of the face
being often too large for the remainder. Alexander von Humboldt and
Matthew Arnold are the only examples I have noted of disproportionally
large brows and eyes. The chins of Hegel, Gray, and Pater, on the other
hand, are at least one size too large; the nose and mouth of Tyndall
and Emerson are certainly two sizes too large; Hans Christian Andersen
displays an even greater lack of harmony. Dr. Johnson combined a fine
head and eyes with a coarse nose and mouth; Landor’s mouth was as
weak as his head was powerful. Goldsmith presented the extraordinary
combination of a low, bulging forehead, with almost no head behind
the ears, handsome eyes and nose, a swollen upper lip, and a receding
chin--all much pitted with smallpox. Goldsmith is a striking example,
for in spite of his singularly unfortunate appearance, his intrinsic
charm is yet obvious.
“Thus, while the details of men’s faces are a source of curious
interest, their greatest significance is the way in which a general
expression transpires through them. We are not in the least repelled
by the ugliness of Aesop and Socrates, the ‘dumb-ox’ look of Thomas
Aquinas, or what Edward Lear called ‘Wordsworth’s desire for milk
appearance.’ When Petrarch appears cheerful and Montaigne sad, Smollett
mournful and Spinoza merry, we yet feel that there is more than meets
the eye. I believe, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding, that
a man’s character is usually clear in his countenance; here I take
up at random Confucius and Calvin, Cicero and Franklin, Rabelais and
Chaucer--who could misjudge them? It is as Hazlitt said--you get from
a great number of details a general impression which is true and well
founded, although you may not be able to analyze or explain it.”
“It is certainly most interesting,” I said, as Professor Maturin put
his portraits into their cabinet. “I wonder why the subject has not
been investigated more fully and scientifically.”
“It has been thought about a good deal,” replied Professor Maturin,
“ever since the Greeks. Renaissance rulers thought it of use in
selecting their courtiers. Goethe kept a painter busy recording faces
that interested him. About a century ago Lavater devoted a score of
handsome folios, with splendid plates, to the study of faces, but
his treatment was very desultory--discussions of ‘deep, designing,
envious villains as represented by Raphael,’ and so on. Some of his
successors went to the opposite extreme of definiteness, concluding
that long noses denote courage, high cheek-bones honesty, large lips
sociability, and the like. There have been, however, various scientific
studies, such as Darwin’s on the expression of the emotions, Galton’s
composite photography, and Bertillon’s accurate system of measurement
and classification. Yet for some reason the subject still remains one
of those that bibliographers catalogue as merely ‘curious.’ I like to
dip into it now and then because of its general human interest, and
always find it a stimulus to freshness and directness of observation; a
caution, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, against distrusting imagination
and feeling in favor of ‘narrow, partial, confined, argumentative
theories.’”
I remained silent while Professor Maturin looked over his cases for a
book, and then stood leafing through it, until he found his place, and
said: “Hazlitt sums the matter up in his essay ‘On the Knowledge of
Character’ with these words: ‘There are various ways of getting at a
knowledge of character--by looks, words, actions. The first of these,
which seems the most superficial, is perhaps the safest, and least
liable to deceive:... A man’s look is the work of years; it is stamped
on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay more, by the
hand of nature.... This sort of prima facie evidence shows what a man
is, better than what he says or does.’”
X
_Mental Hygiene_
As the Vicar, the Physician, and I entered Professor Maturin’s study,
after dinner, the Vicar sank into his chair with a deep sigh. “Is it so
bad as that?” queried Professor Maturin, as he passed the cigars. “I
beg a general pardon,” replied the Vicar. “To-day has quite tired me
out, although I am just back from a vacation.” The Physician gazed at
him professionally for a moment, and then said: “A clear case for the
Book of Mental Hygiene.” As we turned, expectant, Professor Maturin,
after some hesitation, took a portfolio from his desk, saying: “The
Physician refers to a collection of memoranda, drawn from my experience
and reading, during a series of years, but recently put into something
like order. They are semi-personal in substance, and quite staccato in
form, but I am very willing to read them if you will agree to stop me
when you have had enough.” Accepting our assent, he began:
“Now that science can cause the Ethiopian to change his skin and the
leopard his spots,--that is, can modify the color of rabbits and
multiply the toes of guinea-pigs, or graft new characteristics on
cattle or on grain,--it is high time to take thought for the efficient
and economic working of that intellectual machinery which is not only
the means to all such progress, but the fundamental condition of our
mental being. Even if we do not accept Professor Lankester’s view that
man has produced such a special state for himself that he must either
acquire firmer hold of the conditions, or perish, we must agree with
Professor James that the problem of access to different kinds of power
is a practical issue of supreme importance.
“Physical conditions, of course, are the basis of all mental hygiene.
Whatever may be the relation between body and mind, no one can doubt
its intimacy. Many persons, like Wordsworth and Lowell, suffer physical
prostration after mental exertion; nor does Dr. Johnson need to tell us
that ‘ill-health makes every one a scoundrel.’ Habits of confinement or
exercise mean so much that we might almost know from their work that
Balzac and Poe wrote in closed rooms; but that Wordsworth and Browning
composed in the open air, Burns and Scott on horseback, Swinburne while
swimming. It is true that, as Roger Ascham said, ‘walking alone into
the field hath no token of courage in it,’ and that the horsemanship
commended by Erasmus is expensive; but there are countless forms of
physical exercise, some suitable to each. George Sand set a standard
of wisdom in increasing her exercise when under especial strain. Food
and sleep also influence mental life tremendously. Whether we eat one
simple meal a day with Kant, or many varied ones with Goethe, we must
remember the laws of nutrition and Carlyle’s warning that indigestion
comprises all of the ills of life.
“The criteria for sleep likewise are wholly individual so long as
we do not drowse on other people’s hearth-rugs like De Quincey; or,
like Rossetti, entertain our callers by taking naps. Some think it
impossible to get too much sleep. Kant limited his for the sake of
soundness; he, moreover, carefully tranquillized his mind before going
to bed, not by a total exclusion of ideas but by a selection. Some
forms of analysis and combination appear to continue during sleep. Gray
had a friend who made verses in his dreams, and Bancroft’s bedtime
problems were often solved when he awoke. The time to sleep and the
time to wake must be left to individual instinct and social sanction.
The doctrine of deliberate rising--dear to Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray
and Lowell--has recently been reinforced by a French savant’s
declaration that getting up quickly leads to madness.
“Again, mental life is so conditioned by sensations that every man
should ask himself Professor Dowden’s list of questions concerning
them. What did not Tennyson owe to his hearing, Keats to his taste
and smell? Has anything ever affected human character more than the
present eye-mindedness due to printing and artificial lighting? We
have recently been shown the relation between thought and the jerks of
the eye in reading, and even between pessimism and eye-strain. What
might not be explained by nervous tension or arterial pressure, in
Dr. Holmes’s ‘bulbous-headed men’ or Donizetti’s creative headaches.
The very posture of the body is important in mental labor--many books
are cramped from being bent over. Writers in bed have scientific
endorsement for their approach to the horizontal. Yet, as this is hard
on the eyes, a reclining-chair like Milton’s seems better. But no habit
should be too rigid. It is unwise to risk Kant’s distress at the loss
of the weather-vane he gazed at While pondering; and one doubts whether
Schiller’s odor of rotten apples, or Gautier’s cat in his lap, or
Marryat’s lion-skin table were worth the trouble.
“Accommodation must be practiced also with regard to youth and age.
Whether through cellular differentiation or bacteria, age so profoundly
affects the mind that books might almost be classified according to the
productive ages of their authors.
“The influence of climate on mental life is beyond control, except as
we may choose our place of residence and vary our occupation according
to the season or the weather. Days vary according to the ebb and flow
of the vitality stored at week-ends--Monday often wasting energy that
is much missed by Friday. Deliberation and determination can do much
to increase efficiency and well-being by employing one’s best times
appropriately: prizing the cumulative value of unbroken hours,--of
morning concentration, afternoon acquisition, and evening meditation.
Those who cannot control the day must use the night--a French scientist
even advocates a watch in the middle of the night. There are no rules
of universal applicability, but study of the characteristics and
circumstances of our best moments may make possible their easy and
frequent duplication. That was Pater’s recipe for successful living.
“In the matter of environment, congenial surroundings means
spontaneous action. Yet lack of harmony may stimulate: pastoral poetry
and landscape painting are the work of men weary of towns. Both
town stimulus and country composure have corresponding values. Many
realistic and introspective writers agree with Poe that circumscription
of space aids concentration of attention: Pope worked best in his
grotto, Montaigne in his tower, and many great books have been written
in prisons. Many romanticists and philosophers, on the other hand,
prefer wide views from hills or mountains, or to be beside or upon the
sea. There are similar differences with regard to tidiness or disorder
among scholarly paraphernalia and personal belongings. Both efficiency
and happiness depend upon a nice individual balance of habit and
variety, freedom and restraint. Flaubert used the same study for forty
years, and Lecky could think only when perfectly tranquil; but William
Morris and Anthony Trollope liked to write on railway trains.
“As for mental society or solitude, there has been, as Edmund Gosse
puts it, ‘a strong sentiment of intellectual comradeship in every age
of real intellectual vitality.’ Philip Gilbert Hamerton was probably
right in saying that intellectual traditions persist more through
coteries than through books. Some general society is necessary to
cultivate tolerance and sympathy. One must also come to some adjustment
with democracy--its freedom and unrest, its ideal foundation and
materialistic structure, its lack of prejudice and its inexperience--we
cannot rest in Socrates’ opinion that the majority is merely a heap
of bad pennies. After the demands of social service are arranged for,
however, the intellect must look through and beyond popular standards,
and purchase independence at whatever cost. Much seclusion is essential
for knowledge, some solitude for wisdom. Both independence and sympathy
are attained through an inner circle of select companions, kept in
what Dr. Johnson called repair, by Emerson’s plan of allowing the less
interested to fall away and be replaced by choice additions.
“Mental health, moreover, demands some conscious agreement with one’s
income, and some mastery of expenditure. Too much money is as bad as
too little. A generous amount insures free activity and rich material,
but it relaxes determination and demands discrimination. Wealth is
essential for works of great accumulation in history, or of fine
appreciation in the arts. But humanists appear to be none the worse for
poverty--Cervantes was a public letter-writer, and his family took
in washing. It is well, in any case, to learn with Socrates how many
things one does not need, and to remember that there are uses even for
adversity.