I
Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had
turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.
The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of
talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with
cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like
good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;"
one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself
almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epic
poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many dramatists (though
the age of the drama has passed) have wasted their genius in great
mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man who might have been
the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of this country, who chose
to become a country judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in
an obscure corner of the world, listening to wrangling lawyers and
prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men rather than
enlighten them.
It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation of the
dead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not as for
what they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns might have excelled
as a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr. Carlyle
says that if he had been sent to a university, and become a trained
intellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the whole course of
British literature! A large undertaking, as so vigorous and dazzling a
writer as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, since British
literature has swept by him in a resistless and widening flood, mainly
uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivances wrecked on the
shore with other curiosities of letters, and yet among the richest of
all the treasures lying there.
It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear what
talent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed to a
moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic, such a
mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober; and
then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly soul,
conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously drunk. I
suppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant and promising men
have been lost to the world in this way. It is sometimes almost painful
to think what a surplus of talent and genius there would be in the world
if the habit of intoxication should suddenly cease; and what a slim
chance there would be for the plodding people who have always had
tolerably good habits. The fear is only mitigated by the observation
that the reputation of a person for great talent sometimes ceases with
his reformation.
It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wives
never marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartial
sweetness, and make it generally habitable. This is one of the mysteries
of Providence and New England life. It seems a pity, at first sight,
that all those who become poor wives have the matrimonial chance, and
that they are deprived of the reputation of those who would be good
wives were they not set apart for the high and perpetual office of
priestesses of society. There is no beauty like that which was spoiled
by an accident, no accomplishments--and graces are so to be envied as
those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of. All
of which shows what a charitable and good-tempered world it is,
notwithstanding its reputation for cynicism and detraction.
Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife that her
husband has all the talents, and could, if he would, be distinguished in
any walk in life; and nothing will be more beautiful--unless this is
a very dry time for signs--than the husband's belief that his wife is
capable of taking charge of any of the affairs of this confused planet.
There is no woman but thinks that her husband, the green-grocer, could
write poetry if he had given his mind to it, or else she thinks small
beer of poetry in comparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely
vegetable. It is touching to see the look of pride with which the
wife turns to her husband from any more brilliant personal presence or
display of wit than his, in the perfect confidence that if the world
knew what she knows, there would be one more popular idol. How she
magnifies his small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his
face as if it were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man would
make! What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporals
in their retired homes who did more for the safety and success of
our armies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the
"high-cock-a-lorum" commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy the
reputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really won Five
Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and will hear it a
hundred times more with apparently unabated interest. What a general
her husband would have made; and how his talking talent would shine in
Congress!
HERBERT. Nonsense. There isn't a wife in the world who has not taken
the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her own
mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs and
specifications of her own. That knowledge, however, she ordinarily keeps
to herself, and she enters into a league with her husband, which he was
never admitted to the secret of, to impose upon the world. In nine out
of ten cases he more than half believes that he is what his wife tells
him he is. At any rate, she manages him as easily as the keeper does the
elephant, with only a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually
she flatters him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his
hide on occasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think
that she thoroughly believes in him.
THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I have
heard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call it
so.
HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which society rests,
the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it is
on this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of
them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and
independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men.
Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the
ideal life of the poets.
THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to have
his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more than
he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and there is
nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.
HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that the reason
why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in the open
for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to change the
certain domination of centuries, with weapons they are perfectly
competent to handle, for an experiment. I think we should be better
off if women were more transparent, and men were not so systematically
puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to control them.
MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that guise,
and begins to convince me that I can see through her like a ray of
light, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the truly dangerous.
There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to say that; he has just
returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quite often begins his
remarks with "on the ship going over;" the Young Lady declares that
he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says it, that makes her
sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless, guileless, natural bunch
of lace and feathers you ever saw; she was all candor and helplessness
and dependence; she sang like a nightingale, and talked like a nun.
There never was such simplicity. There was n't a sounding-line on board
that would have gone to the bottom of her soulful eyes. But she managed
the captain and all the officers, and controlled the ship as if she had
been the helm. All the passengers were waiting on her, fetching this
and that for her comfort, inquiring of her health, talking about her
genuineness, and exhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety,
as if she had been about to knight them all and give them a castle
apiece when they came to land.
THE MISTRESS. What harm? It shows what I have always said, that the
service of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men.
MANDEVILLE. If she is noble, and not a mere manager. I watched this
woman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else. She never
did.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see her again? I presume Mandeville has
introduced her here for some purpose.
MANDEVILLE. No purpose. But we did see her on the Rhine; she was the
most disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor with her
maid. I judged that her happiness depended upon establishing controlling
relations with all about her. On this Rhine boat, to be sure, there was
reason for disgust. And that reminds me of a remark that was made.
THE YOUNG LADY. Oh!
MANDEVILLE. When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of a
dreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see no
cause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf. The
fog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, and
increased. We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but in vain.
It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness. We had
heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had no idea that
the entire stream was infected. It was intolerable.
The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holding their
noses and admiring the scenery. You might see a row of them leaning over
the side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag, entranced with the
romance of the situation, and all holding their noses with thumb and
finger. The sweet Rhine! By and by somebody discovered that the odor
came from a pile of cheese on the forward deck, covered with a canvas;
it seemed that the Rhinelanders are so fond of it that they take it
with them when they travel. If there should ever be war between us
and Germany, the borders of the Rhine would need no other defense from
American soldiers than a barricade of this cheese. I went to the stern
of the steamboat to tell a stout American traveler what was the origin
of the odor he had been trying to dodge all the morning. He looked more
disgusted than before, when he heard that it was cheese; but his only
reply was: "It must be a merciful God who can forgive a smell like
that!"